Construction of underground parking lots has been said one of urgent measures to deal with traffic jam in Ho Chi Minh City, however no project has been built since the city approved a plan to build the parking lots 12 years ago.
The project under Le Van Tam Park has broken ground and expected to be built three years later but it has still been idle.
This is considered to be the largest project with the floor area of 103,225 square meters and the depth of 15 meters, comprising five basements with three for trade and service.
Investor Underground Space Investment Development Company said that they have followed the project for over ten years and tired with many procedures.
Similarly the project under Trong Dong Theatre in District 1 has been stuck with procedures, according to investor Dong Duong Company Ltd.
According to some investors, besides procedure problems they have met with capital difficulties. Most projects have been established for ten years. At present, material and labor costs have skyrocketed surging the total investment level.
Meantime, the capital recovery ability of these projects is low as authorized agencies will decide parking fee not the investors, they added.
In fact, two investors have stepped down from two projects planned at Hoa Lu Stadium and Tao Dan Cultural Park for capital difficulties. HCMC has transferred them to Vingroup who is under survey phase to establish new projects.
Leaders of the city’s Department of Transport said they had urged investors to speed up the progress of the underground parking lots. Still, their implementation has been slow because of many problems such as high investment capital and loan interest rate affecting investors’ capital mobilization.
Besides, building of underground parking lots is unprecedented in the city causing difficulties in determining land rent level, the department said.
The HCMC People’s Committee has proposed relevant ministries to consider assistances to investors and approve a mechanism to encourage them such as exemption of rent or land use fee to areas for parking purposes.
The committee has also proposed tax incentives in corporate income, exercise and import duties to hi-tech equipment serving the parking lots’ operation.
Despite these, it is still unclear when the city will have underground parking lots.
