Minister Nguyen Van Thang directed to complete the expansion of Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway by the end of 2026.

Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang gave a directive speech.

Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang gave a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Project.

This is one of 250 projects and works that were simultaneously started and inaugurated at 80 locations in 34 provinces and cities across the country in a combination of direct and online forms to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the successful August Revolution and National Day September 2.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway Expansion Project held in An Phuoc Commune, Dong Nai Province this morning, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang highly appreciated the great efforts, determination and drastic actions of the Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) when in less than 4 months, it completed the investment preparation work to start the Project in time for the country's especially important political event.

Minister Nguyen Van Thang said that the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway expansion project was assigned to VEC as the managing agency, implementing the investment in the form of public investment with mixed investment capital from the central budget and capital mobilized by VEC.

Given the urgency and special importance of the Project, in order to complete and operate it in sync with the Long Thanh International Airport Project, the Ministry of Finance has directed VEC to report and receive approval from the Prime Minister to allow the Project to be invested in the form of an emergency construction project and to apply a number of special mechanisms to accelerate the completion of investment procedures and project implementation.

This is a particularly important and strategic traffic project, expanding development space not only for Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai but also for the Southeast provinces.

Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway is the main route among 8 routes connecting Long Thanh International Airport to exploit synchronously, promote investment efficiency of Long Thanh International Airport Project, meet the increasing transportation demand, shorten travel time and costs, attract domestic and international tourists, promote socio-economic development, and at the same time ensure national defense and security for the Southern Key Economic Zone.

In addition, the Project is also the first project to be implemented in the form of public investment assigned to a state-owned enterprise as the managing agency according to the provisions of the Law on Public Investment.

The successful implementation of the project is of utmost importance, affirming the correctness of policy implementation; realizing the Party's orientation on decentralization, delegation of power and attracting and diversifying public investment resources; at the same time, concretizing the VEC restructuring project towards developing VEC into a leading national enterprise in the field of expressway investment and development.

Therefore, according to the head of the Finance sector, the Project has been approved by the Prime Minister for investment in the form of an emergency construction project with a number of special mechanisms of great significance, helping investors to proactively deploy and simultaneously carry out many stages of the project, in order to speed up the completion of investment procedures.

Minister Nguyen Van Thang noted that in order to meet the completion schedule as directed by the Prime Minister, VEC needs to develop a specific progress critical path for each item of the Project, and at the same time have a very strict control plan.

Minister Nguyen Van Thang said that initially, VEC proposed to complete the Project in 2027. However, the Ministry of Finance and VEC are making efforts to implement solutions to overcome difficulties and are determined to complete the Project by the end of 2026 for synchronous exploitation with Long Thanh Airport.

“I request VEC and contractors to uphold the spirit of: the highest responsibility, the highest effort, the highest determination, properly implement the Central's direction, speed up construction progress, ensure quality, construction techniques, labor safety, environmental sanitation, avoid loss, waste, negativity, ensure the Project is basically completed in 2026, promptly connect synchronously with Long Thanh International Airport, contributing to the overall development of the country", Minister Nguyen Van Thang directed.

Minister Nguyen Van Thang affirmed that the Ministry of Finance and its agencies will support and promptly resolve proposals and recommendations from units participating in the project, creating conditions for units to complete their tasks.

According to Mr. Truong Viet Dong, Chairman of the Board of Directors of VEC, the investor and contractors of the Project are fully aware of the difficulties and challenges, so they will start construction in "3 shifts, 4 teams" immediately after the groundbreaking ceremony to basically complete the project by December 2026 as directed by the Prime Minister.

It is known that the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway expansion project is a group A project, a special traffic project, passing through two provinces and cities, Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai.

The total investment of the Project is nearly 15,000 billion VND, including state budget capital and VEC mobilized capital, of which public investment capital is 6,500 billion VND and VEC mobilized capital is about 8,500 billion VND.

After the Government officially approved the Project implementation in the form of an emergency construction project, VEC directed the consultant to immediately carry out the survey, prepare the construction drawing design, and estimate in parallel with the survey, prepare the Feasibility Study Report; approve the construction drawings for each item of the bid package to organize the implementation right at the construction site, both design and construction; select contractors and immediately implement the items whose construction drawing design has been approved; start construction from August 19, 2025 and basically complete the project in December 2026 according to the direction of the Prime Minister.

Specifically, the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh Expressway expansion project has a basic centerline following the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh - Dau Giay Expressway, expanding to both sides. The section across Long Thanh Bridge is expanded to the right of the existing route (downstream).

Upon completion, the Project will ensure the technical standards of the expressway, smooth operation, make the most of the items invested in and constructed in Phase 1, ensure economic - technical and long-term project stability.

In particular, the section from Ring Road 2 intersection to Ring Road 3 intersection (Km4+000÷Km8+844.5) is more than 4.8 km long, with investment to expand from 4 lanes to 8 lanes.

The section from the Ring Road 3 intersection to the intersection with Bien Hoa - Vung Tau Expressway, excluding Long Thanh Bridge (Km8+844.5÷Km25+920) is more than 14.7 km long, with investment to expand from 4 lanes to 10 lanes.

Long Thanh Bridge (Km11+428.75÷Km13+747.25) is over 2.3 km long, building a new bridge unit with a scale of 5 complete lanes in the direction from Ho Chi Minh City to Long Thanh, on the right side of the existing bridge (symmetrical with the old bridge centerline through the centerline of the completed expressway) with a width of 23.75 m.

Regarding technical standards, the section Km4+000÷Km25+920 meets the standards of a class 120 expressway, corresponding to a design speed of 120 km/h according to the National Highway Regulation QCVN 117:2024/BGTVT and Vietnamese Standard TCVN 5729:2012 Expressway - Design requirements; Long Thanh bridge, designed with a speed of 100 km/h; the design load for the bridges is HL93.

The project is divided into 2 construction packages, applying the contractor selection method of shortened bidding; the contract type is adjustable unit price.

In which, Package XL01: Construction of the expressway section Km4+00 - Km13+900 was awarded by VEC to the consortium of Deo Ca Group Joint Stock Company - Trung Chinh Construction and Trading Company Limited - Phuong Thanh Transport Investment and Construction Joint Stock Company - 368 Construction Joint Stock Company - Khang Nguyen Infrastructure Investment and Construction Joint Stock Company with a winning bid price of VND 5,573.5 billion; contract implementation period is 18 months.

Package XL02: Construction of the expressway section Km13+900 - Km25+920 was awarded by VEC to the consortium of Truong Son Construction Corporation - Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation - Thang Long Corporation - JSC - Construction and Installation Joint Stock Company with a winning bid price of VND 4,628,967 billion; contract implementation period is 17 months.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/bo-truong-nguyen-van-thang-chi-dao-hoan-thanh-mo-rong-cao-toc-tphcm---long-thanh-vao-cuoi-nam-2026-d363435.html