Minister of Transport Nguyễn Văn Thể has ordered relevant agencies to quickly complete necessary documents so that the ministry can approve 10 sub-projects that are part of the North-South Expressway in July as scheduled.— Photo vnexpress.net

HÀ NỘI — Minister of Transport Nguyễn Văn Thể has ordered relevant agencies to quickly complete necessary documents so that the ministry can approve 10 sub-projects that are part of the North-South Expressway in July as scheduled.

“The only acceptable reasons for delays in this project are external causes”, Thể said at the meeting held on Wednesday.

He charged the sub-projects’ management board to co-operate with the ministry’s Environment Department to verify and adopt an environmental impact assessment report for each sub-project to meet the deadline.

“The management board will have to take full responsibility if any sub-project fell behind schedule,” he added.

He also told the Science and Technology Department as well as the Public-Private Partnership Department to rapidly release compulsory technical standards for an intelligent transportation system (ITS) and an electronic toll collection for the project.

Investors could hire any company to install the electronic toll collection but all compulsory technical standards needed to be strictly implemented, he said.

The sub-projects’ management board was closely supervising the company’s implementation, he said.

It is estimated that the total investment for the North-South Expressway is US$5.3 billion. The State budget will allocate US$2.42 billion, while the remaining $2.88 billion must be sourced from investors. 

As planned, North-South Expressway will cover 2,109km in total, stretching from the northern province of Lạng Sơn to the southernmost province of Cà Mau.

By 2020, the North-South corridor is expected to serve 45.37 million passengers and transport up to 62.27 million tonnes of cargo per year.

The ministry’s report showed that the national transport system carried nearly 660 million tonnes and 1.8 billion passengers in the first six months of this year. The numbers are 9.7 per cent and 10.4 per cent higher than the same period last year, respectively.

The report also said traffic accidents killed 4,103 people and injured 7,027 others during the first six months of this year. The number of dead and injured people are slightly lower than the figures for the same period last year. — VNS