>> Road projects lack sufficient funding from state budget

The Ministry of Transport discussed weaknesses in transportation projects at a conference in Hanoi on February 15.

Rapid degradation seen at Thang Long Bridge

More clear regulations needed to improve quality of transportation projects

Tran Quoc Viet, Head of the ministry’s Transport Construction Quality Control and Management Bureau said at the conference that many existing transportation projects, despite having been in operation for only a short time, have been downgraded.

This can be seen in projects like national highways 2, 3 and 6, as well as World Bank-funded 48. National Highway 53 in Vinh Long Province and several sections of National Highway 1A, are in the same state, he added.

Thang Long Bridge is also among typical examples because of rapid degradation. The bridge’s surface has had to be repaired six times since December 2009, costing of hundreds of billions of VND.

Since April 2010 several sink holes have appeared on the road leading to Ham Luong Bridge in Ben Tre Province, a project that cost VND786 billion (USD37.98 million) to build.

More clear regulations needed

Mr. Viet pointed out that one of the reasons for this situation is a shortage of capital, explaining that this has affected the investment scale of projects. Also, the exponential increase of traffic has been a factor to the deterioration of many roads.

In some cases, to win bidding packages, contractors offer low prices and then cut corners to compensate, he said, adding that, “It is important to select reliable contractors.”

At the conference, Hoang Ha, Head of Science and Technology, under the ministry, proposed issuing management policies for state-funded projects, as well as those that fall under the categories of build-operation-transfer (BOT), build-transfer (BT), build-transfer-operation (BTO) and public–private partnership (PPP).

The Ministry of Transport will take this year to raise the quality of transportation projects through tightening control over all stages, from design and construction to management.

Last year, the Vietnamese transport sector disbursed VND40 trillion (USD1.93 billion). The country built over 1,000km of roads and a number of bus and rail stations.