A ground breaking ceremony for the new passenger terminal project at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport in HCM City was held on December 24. — VNA/VNS Photo Dương Giang

HCM CITY — Construction of the third passenger terminal project at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport in HCM City began on Saturday.

Attending the ground breaking ceremony for the project, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính said transport infrastructure development, including freight transport infrastructure, is one of the three strategic breakthroughs for the country’s sustainable socio-economic development.

“The diversification of modes of transport is an important factor to boost the improvement of the transportation network,” he said.

The T3 terminal project will contribute to promoting socio-economic development, and ensure security and defence of HCM City and the southern region.

The State-owned Airports Corporation of Việt Nam is carrying out the work at a cost of nearly VNĐ11 trillion (US$463.2 million).

The construction is expected to take 37 months.

The work was expected to start in the third quarter of this year, but the Ministry of Transport was still waiting for 16ha of military-owned land to be handed over by the Ministry of National Defence.

At a recent meeting the Prime Minister said the construction should be started and completed quickly to ease the crowding at the airport.

The number of passengers has surged in recent years to nearly double its designed capacity.

The airport has two terminals now, with T1 serving domestic flights and T2 handling international flights. T1 can serve up to 15 million passengers a year and T2, 10 million.

The airport was designed to handle 25 million passengers a year by 2020, but it has been receiving almost 40 million a year since 2017.

Once completed, T3 will handle domestic flights and up to 20 million passengers annually.

With the COVID pandemic ending and the economy showing strong recovery, passenger numbers have surged again as aviation and tourism recover.

This has again caused overcrowding at major airports in the country such as Tân Sơn Nhất and Nội Bài in Hà Nội. — VNS