Chau Doc - Can Tho - Soc Trang Expressway at risk of not meeting required progress

According to the report of the Ministry of Construction on the implementation of the Chau Doc - Can Tho - Soc Trang Expressway Construction Investment Project, up to now, all 4 component projects have basically completed the site clearance and land handover for project implementation. The average construction output of the entire project reached more than 45% of the contract value.

Of which, component project 1 (through An Giang province, 57 km long) reached 55%, component project 2 (through the old Can Tho city, more than 37 km long) reached 41%, component project 3 (through the old Hau Giang province, nearly 37 km long) reached 46% and component project 4 (through the old Soc Trang province, more than 58 km long) reached 40%. Compared to the implementation plan, component projects 1 and 3 basically met the progress, component projects 2 and 4 were about 5-9% behind schedule.

Up to now, the total capital allocated to the project in the annual plan is 28,125 billion VND. It is expected that by the end of August 2025, the disbursement will reach 20,043 billion VND (equivalent to 71% of the assigned plan).

Construction of overpass on Chau Doc - Can Tho - Soc Trang expressway

Can Tho City People's Committee said that the capital allocated for component projects 2, 3 and 4 through the area to date is more than 18,800 billion VND, the disbursement value is more than 13,000 billion VND, reaching a rate of nearly 70%. In 2025 alone, the capital allocated to date is nearly 7,300 billion VND, the disbursement value is nearly 1,600 billion VND, reaching a rate of nearly 22%.

According to the People's Committee of Can Tho City, the allocation of capital from various sources is guaranteed according to the project implementation progress. However, the disbursement rate in the first 8 months of 2025 is low, and it is likely that the disbursement rate will not be 100% as planned in 2025. Although the investor has tried to find sources of sand for the project, it has not yet met the source and has not reached the exploitation capacity according to the project progress. The implementation progress is still slow compared to the registered plan of the construction unit.

The Ministry of Construction said that the implementation of the project still faces many difficulties, specifically: Regarding sand for embankment, localities have made efforts to speed up the licensing procedures for exploiting 26.8 million m3 out of the total demand of 28.9 million m3, basically meeting the reserve requirements for project implementation. However, although the sand reserves in the area according to the planning are relatively large, the exploitation capacity cannot meet the progress of the projects. Increasing the capacity can impact the environment, causing landslides on both sides of the river.

The difficulties and problems with sand for embankment materials are due to objective reasons due to many key projects in the region being implemented simultaneously, especially prioritizing projects with completion requirements by 2025. The subjective reasons are that the survey of construction material sources only assesses reserves, not actual exploitation capacity according to project progress; and the impact of simultaneously implementing key projects in the region has not been assessed.

Regarding construction progress, the overall project basically does not meet the requirements of the National Assembly (basically completing the entire route in 2026 and completing and putting the entire project into synchronous operation in 2027), especially component project 2 and component project 4 are 5-9% behind schedule.

The main reason for the delay is the lack of sand materials for the foundation. Currently, the construction progress of the bridge meets the requirements and is expected to be basically completed in December 2025. However, the critical path of the project is the construction of the road section, the biggest problem is that the sand mining capacity only reaches an average of 13% of the requirements, affecting the volume of embankment and roadbed loading (only reaching about 33%).

“If sand mining capacity is not increased, combined with adjusting technical solutions in the direction of replacing wicks with cement-reinforced soil pillars or combining wicks and vacuum suction to shorten loading time, the construction progress of the road section will be seriously affected, with the potential risk of not being able to complete the project as required by the Prime Minister and the National Assembly,” the Ministry of Construction said.

The Chau Doc - Can Tho - Soc Trang Expressway construction investment project, phase 1, started on June 17, 2023, with a total length of more than 188 km, a scale of 4 lanes, and a total investment of VND 44,691 billion.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/cao-toc-chau-doc---can-tho---soc-trang-co-nguy-co-kho-dat-tien-do-theo-yeu-cau-d370335.html