Soai Rap River dredging project to go up for bid again

The government of HCMC has allowed the Department of Transport to put up a Soai Rap River dredging project for rebid, citing the impact of the volatile exchange rate between the local currency dong and the U.S. dollar.

Tran The Ky, deputy director of the department, said the cost of phase one of the project had surged sharply due to the depreciation of the dong against the dollar, making it impossible for the investor to arrange as sufficient funding as approved.

Ky’s department has got approval from the city government to take over the project from Tan Thuan Industrial Promotion Company Ltd. (IPC) which originally planned to invest around VND1.5 trillion and raise this amount from other sources than the state budget.

In addition to HCMC, the project covers three other provinces – Tien Giang, Long An and Ba Ria-Vung Tau and is aimed at paving the way for carrying out a plan to relocate inner-city ports along the Saigon River.

In the original schedule, the river should have been dredged to a depth of 9.5 meters in 2009-2010 to allow 30,000-50,000 DWT ships to navigate, 11 meters in 2012-2013 for vessels of 50,000-70,000 DWT, and 12 meters after 2015 for ships larger than 70,000 DWT.

Tags: Soai Rap River dredging project

Posted by VBN on Mar 24 2011. Filed under Infrastructure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry