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Vietnam needs to ‘accelerate’ infrastructure projects: ADB
Vietnam needs to prioritize and “accelerate” its infrastructure projects, as it has ambitious plans to build power plants, ports, roads and railways in a period when financial resources are squeezed globally, ADB said.
Even with a global credit crunch and recession in many countries, there is money available to Vietnam from governments, international agencies and the private sector, said Ayumi Konishi, the Asian Development Bank’s country director in Hanoi.
Vietnam “cannot do everything on its own and at once,” Konishi said, noting that foreign companies would be deterred if they have to deal with power outages and transport bottlenecks.
Government officials have said about US$6 billion of stimulus spending will be budgeted this year, without specifying how it will be allocated or how much may have been in previous plans. The economy expanded 6.2 percent last year, the least in nine years, as consumers in the US, Japan and Europe reined in spending.
Vietnam, a nation of 86 million with an $85 billion economy, last month unveiled a plan to build a 1,555- kilometer high-speed rail from Hanoi, its capital, south to the economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City. That project would cost $55.8 billion, according to Nguyen Huu Bang, chairman and chief executive officer of state-owned Vietnam Railways.
“The high-speed rail is crucial for Vietnam,” Bang said at the Asia Pacific Rail 2009 conference in Hanoi last week. The railway would have two stages completed by 2019 and the final two in 2035, he said.
When complete, travel time between Hanoi and HCMC will be about five-and-a-half hours, from 36 hours now, Bang said. Vietnam would consider technologies used in Japan’s Shinkansen, Germany’s Inter-City, and France’s TGV rail system, he said.
Vietnam’s north-south railway was built by the French between 1882 and 1936.
Konishi spoke at the event, where companies such as Alstom SA, Alcatel-Lucent UK Ltd., and Singapore’s SMRT Corp. made presentations on their transit products and services.
“There is a real competition here,” Dominique Pouliquen, senior vice president for Alstom Transport Asia Pacific and country president for Alstom Singapore, said in an interview in Hanoi. “However, there is enough space regarding the number of opportunities in Vietnam.”
Bloomberg, thanhnien
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