According to a report in Global Construction Review Oct. 29, Vietnam has asked China State Construction Engineering Corp. (CSCEC) to help it build a north-south 350 kph high-speed rail line from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, which Vietnam intends to fund internally. This will be the largest-ever infrastructure project for Vietnam, and it is likely that CSCEC’s ability to build the 1,700 km of track and facilities with greater economic efficiency (roughly $30 million/km versus a projected $45 million/km if built by Vietnam’s domestic companies) will conduce to the project’s success.
Nguyen Ngoc Canh, an official of Vietnam’s Commission for the Management of State Capital (CMSC) public investment fund, said that involving CSCEC will fit a framework established by China’s President Xi Jinping and General Secretary To Lam of Vietnam’s Communist Party in August in Beijing.
A report in Channel News Asia on Oct. 3 had quoted Vietnam’s Transport Ministry that the country will fund, from its own resources, a high-speed rail line from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City in the south of the country, the project planned to be completed by 2035. The cost is estimated by the Transport Ministry at $67 billion equivalent, with annual average costs for the state budget estimated at about $5.6 billion for 12 years.
