HCMC Ring Road No.2 needing more capital to complete

Ring Road No.2 was introduced in the planning 15 years ago with a length of 64km, beginning from Nguyen Van Linh Street in Binh Chanh District, passing Phu My Bridge of District 7 and Binh Thai Intersection, Go Dua Intersection in Thu Duc City to National Highway No.1 and back to Nguyen Van Linh Street.

The Transportation Works Construction Investment Project Management Authority of HCMC (Transportation Board) informed that the completed sections of Ring Road No.2 are those on National Highway No.1, Nguyen Van Linh Street, Phu My Bridge, the Eastern Ring Road, Rach Chiec Bridge. The leftover 14 km are the 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th sections (with the length of 11km waiting for investment procedures) and the 3^rd section (2.75km long being suspended from construction).

The 3^rd section has 6 driving lanes and a width of 67m, along with the bridges on the parallel roads crossing the canals of Rach Lung, Ong Viet and Go Cat. The total investment is VND2.77 trillion (US$111.4 million), including VND1.82 trillion ($73.2 million) for land clearance. At present, the site is an empty lot having degraded simple roads, which normally become smelly and dirty after rain.

The 4^th section with a length of 5.3km from National Highway No.1 to Nguyen Van Linh Street has a total investment of VNĐ.2 trillion ($370 million). This sub-project is mostly for the expansion of Ho Hoc Lam Street. Right now, the section has many old houses and frequently flooded roads after rain. Local residents said that they are waiting for land compensation to move to new locations.

Director of the Transportation Board Luong Minh Phuc reported that in the 3^rd section, the Land Compensation Committee of Thu Duc City has handed over 15ha of land, accounting for 75 percent of the needed surface area for the project. In March 2020, the construction work had to halt as other locations did not finish the land clearance task. Meanwhile, investors are still waiting to sign the appendices on changing the structure of construction values in compensation contracts and on project timeline, land assessment adjustment.

The Transportation Board has asked HCMC People’s Committee to direct related state departments and agencies to address investors’ proposals on project timeline and project adjustment, to sign the appendices for compensation contracts, to deliver reciprocal land in order to avoid budget waste from generated interest.

HCMC People’s Committee has already released a dispatch to allocate investments for the 1^st and 2^nd sections until 2025. The HCMC Department of Planning and Investment is assigned to review and balance this amount, propose sensible capital allocation for the above sub-projects in the report submitted to HCMC People’s Council about the plan for medium-term public investment in the 2021-2025 period.

As for the 4^th section, HCMC People’s Committee has added VND1.5 billion ($60,322) for the project preparation task in its medium-term public investment plan in the 2021-2025 period. The Transportation Board is urgently collecting written feedbacks from related districts about affect land types, estimated land compensation, resettlement. These ideas will be the foundation to complete the profile for the investment proposal as requested by the HCMC Transport Department.