China Pacific Construction Group (CPCG), the country’s largest private builder by revenue, has expressed its interest in building expressways in Vietnam, including a project running across the country, local media reported.

Part of north-south expressway. Illustrative photo

According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport (MOT), CPCG’s Chairman Yan Jiehe met Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Van Cong on March 7 to discuss the possibility to make an investment. 

Yan Jiehe suggested that Vietnam’s north-south expressway project could be invested under either engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) or build-transfer-operate (BTO) and CPCG is able to do both. 

He emphasized that BTO (under which the investor(s) will be given the right to operate an infrastructure facility within a certain period of time after transferring the built infrastructure facility to the state) has been a successful form in China and is likely a perfect level of the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

He said the ideal PPP model is that private enterprises invest in the whole project then transfer to the government partly or entirely. The executive added that CPCG has invested in infrastructure projects through EPC form by covering all stages regardless of designing and conducting without dividing the project into sections or leaving the project for sub-contractors to ensure the quality and process. 

At the working session, the Vietnamese deputy minister said that the north-south expressway project, which was ratified by the country’s top legislative body, would be invested via transparent bidding mechanism. CPCG, therefore, would be one bidder. 

The north-south expressway project – eastern region with a length of 654 km will have three sections invested by state budget and the remaining eight sections invested under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) mode. The project got approval by the MOT in December 2017. 

The entire project is estimated to cost more than VND100 trillion (US$4.35 billion). 

Work on three sections will start in 2019 while the rest is expected to be kicked off in 2020 after the bidding process gets underway. 

Founded in 1995 and based in Nanjing, China, CPCG is expanding its investment overseas. CPCG’s foray into Europe follows Beijing’s encouragement of domestic firms to look overseas for business opportunities, the so-called “Go Out” policy.

Hanoitimes