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Construction to begin on $16 billion Vietnam airport


Construction of the first phase of Long Thanh international airport in Vietnam will start in December. The project will cost $16bn and is being developed by Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV). The phase first will cost $4.6bn.

The site of the airport is 40km east of Ho Chi Minh City in Dong Nai Province. The airport will be able to service 25 million passengers and 1.2m tons of cargo a year from its 37.5 square kilometres terminal and 4km runway, according to an ACV report.

ACV has agreed to borrow $6.1bn of loans from 12 lenders.

The first phase plans to complete by 2025. The second and third phases will start construction work afterwards and are scheduled to finish before 2040. These will add three more runways and four passenger terminals, allowing the airport to accommodate 100m passengers and 5m tons of cargo.

Vietnam announced its Long Thanh plan in 2013. The scheme had been under discussion for more than 10 years before that, and the original masterplan was approved by prime minister Phan Van Khai in 2006.

James Harris, an infrastructure expert at Pinsent Masons, the firm behind Out-Law, said, "Right now, the global airport sector is experiencing one of the worst periods in economic history. Vietnam has been relatively unaffected domestically by the Covid-19 pandemic, when compared to other parts of the world and so this announcement is a bright spot on an otherwise fairly bleak horizon at the moment. Like many large scale infrastructure investments in Vietnam, the Long Thanh International Airport project has had a long gestation period and it is encouraging to know that construction will soon begin."

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