Land clearance in a section of North-South Expressway project. —VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Transport recently ordered relevant agencies and localities to speed up land clearance to hand over land for the eastern section of North-South Expressway project in the third quarter of this year.

Minister Nguyễn Văn Thể said land clearance progress had topped 90 per cent, but the remaining 10 per cent was mainly in residential areas, so the land clearance would be complex.

If agencies and localities did not take drastic measures, they would miss the deadline, he said.

Thể told the agencies to regularly check land clearance progress and work with localities to solve any problems related to the relocation of technical infrastructure works, including low-voltage power system, water supply and fibre optic cables.

The relocation of water supply and fibre optic cables should be finished by the end of this year, he said.

For the high-voltage power system, Thể assigned the agencies to work with the National Power Transmission Corporation to finish the relocation no later than June next year.

Statistics from the ministry showed the land fund, stretching over 594km of the expressway so far, equal to 91.1 per cent of the expressway’s total length, was ready to be handed over.

Of 13 localities the expressway runs through, Quảng Trị and Vĩnh Long provinces have totally finished their land clearance. The land clearance reaches 97.4 per cent in Thừa Thiên Huế Province, 96.7 per cent in Ninh Thuận Province and 95.4 per cent in Bình Thuận Province.

The ministry is in the process of selecting investors and contractors to implement three sub-projects of Mai Sơn-National Highway No 45, Phan Thiết-Dầu Giây and Vĩnh Hảo-Phan Thiết under the North-South Expressway project. The three sub-projects were changed from the model of public-private partnership (PPP) to the public investment model in June.

There are 153 contractors registered for bidding for the three sub-projects ahead of the September 14 registration deadline.

Dương Viết Roãn, director of the Thăng Long Project Management Broad, the unit in charge of the entire project, said in the short term, the unit would make a preliminary assessment to select a qualified contractor to quickly deploy one package of each sub-project by the end of this month.

The ministry plans to basically complete the eastern section of the North-South expressway project in 2021 and open it to traffic in 2022.

With a total length 654km, the eastern section of North-South expressway runs through the provinces of Nam Định, Ninh Bình, Thanh Hoá, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Trị, Thừa Thiên-Huế, Khánh Hoà, Ninh Thuận, Bình Thuận, Đồng Nai, Tiền Giang and Vĩnh Long.

The project is expected to help improve national competitiveness and attract foreign investment to the country, as well as create more momentum for local socio-economic development. The VNĐ118.71 trillion (US$5.1 billion) project has 11 sub-projects. — VNS