VietNamNet Bridge – Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a proposal by Vietnam Airlines and the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BIDV) to hire a foreign consultant for the planning of Cam Ranh International Airport in Khanh Hoa Province.
The Prime Minister has asked BIDV and Vietnam Airlines to identify the most suitable candidate. The Ministry of National Defence must then approve the selection, he said, adding investors must cover all costs of hiring foreign experts.
Revising its earlier policy, the Government now plans to develop Cam Ranh into an international, rather than domestic, airport.
Cam Ranh International Airport will be located on Cam Ranh Bay, 30 km from Nha Trang City. Formerly a military airfield, in 2004 it was converted to a civilian airport serving the city of Nha Trang.
On May 19, 2004, after major reconstruction, Cam Ranh Airport received its first commercial flight from Ha Noi. It now handles all of Nha Trang's commercial flights, which previously headed to Nha Trang Airport.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
PM approves hiring foreign consultant for airport project
Official suspended in connection to PCI scandal
Director of the HCM City Department of Information and Communications Le Manh Ha told VietNamNet that Huynh Ngoc Si, Director of the East West Avenue and Water Environment Project, had been suspended pending investigation.
Si, who is also Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Transport, is temporarily suspended while investigations are being made of corruption allegations by some officials of Japan’s Pacific Consultants International Company (PCI).
Previously, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told related agencies to coordinate with Japan to investigate and solve the case in accordance with Vietnamese laws.
According to the November 12 edition of the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun, defendants in a bribery scandal related to the Tokyo-based Pacific Consultants International (PCI) confessed to giving a senior official in HCM City a bribe of US$820,000 in connection with ODA projects in Vietnam.
POSCO eyes new Vietnam sites after plan rejected
Viet Nam has rejected a proposal by South Korean steel maker POSCO to build a $5 billion steel mill due to fears it would hurt the environment in Vietnam's most popular resort area, state media reported.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked authorities in the southcentral province of Khanh Hoa to request POSCO choose another site for their project, the online newspaper Viet Nam Net quoted a government directive as saying.
A POSCO spokeswoman said it was considering other sites for the project and talking to the Vietnamese government on the issue.
POSCO, the world's fourth-largest steel maker by output, had applied to build the mill in Van Phong Bay, near Khanh Hoa's beach resort city of Nha Trang, raising the public's concerns in one of Vietnam's most beautiful bays.
The Tuoi Tre (Youth) daily also quoted the government as saying the POSCO mill would affect a government's project to develop the country's biggest container transhipment port in Van Phong Bay.
Apart from the POSCO project, Hanoi has approved investments by foreign steel makers of at least $22 billion this year, including a $9.8 billion joint venture between Malaysia's Lion Industries and top state-run shipbuilder Vinashin.
Other projects include $7.8 billion project by Taiwan's Formosa Heavy Industries and a $5 billion venture by India's Tata Steel.
Formosa eyes $15-bil. petrochemical complex in Vietnam
Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group was looking into plans to invest up to $15 billion in a major petrochemical complex in Vietnam, which would make it the largest foreign investment project in the country, even as the sector is suffering a downturn.
The project, slated for central Vietnam, has won initial approval from the government, the Viet Nam Investment Review reported on Monday.
But a spokesman for Formosa Petrochemical, a unit of Formosa Plastics Group, told Reuters the project was now only at a feasibility study stage.
"It is still in the process of evaluation and it is very preliminary. We were surprised when we heard it because we haven't submitted (the project) yet," said K.Y. Lin, spokesman for Formosa Petrochemical, the largest producer of ethylene in Asia, said.
The global petrochemical sector is in a slump, which some analysts say could last up to four years, more severe than recent downturns, due to weakening Chinese demand, oversupply and competition from more efficient Middle Eastern petrochemical makers that use cheaper gas, instead of naphtha, as feedstock.
This has forced Asian naphtha crackers to reduce processing rates to limit their losses.
The Viet Nam Investment Review report quoted Vo Kim Cu, vice chairman of the central province of Ha Tinh's People Committee, as saying the province had agreed to provide 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of land for the petrochemical project.
Construction of the complex is expected to start in 2010, the report quoted Cu as saying.
Viet Nam, which has no major oil refinery now, aims to raise its annual refining capacity to 30 million tonnes of crude oil, or 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2020. Its first 140,000-bpd refinery, the Dung Quat plant, is expected to come onstream in next February.
Hanoi also aimed to develop a petrochemical sector to cut reliance on imports of products such as plastics and materials for the textile and garment industries.
In September state oil group Petrovietnam and Siam Cement SCC.BK, Thailand's top industrial conglomerate, began construction of another joint-venture petrochemical complex in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau at a cost of $3.77 billion.
The Ba Ria-Vung Tau complex will meet about 65 percent of the country's demand for polyethylene and polypropylene.
Another $1.5 billion naphtha cracker project by Singapore's SP Chemicals in the south central province of Phu Yen is also projected o come onstream from 2014, state media had reported.
Cam Ranh International Airport project in the pipeline
The Prime Minister has agreed to allow the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BIDV) to select foreign consultants to do planning for development of Cam Ranh International Airport.
The PM has also authorised the BIDV and the Vietnam Aviation Corporation to represent investors to negotiate with foreign organizations. A decision to choose foreign partners must be approved by the Ministry of Defence.
All costs related to hiring foreign experts will be paid by investors.
