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Despite the potential and advantages, infrastructure, especially traffic connections, is the "bottleneck" holding back the breakthrough speed of the land in the South of the province.
Lesson 1:
Infrastructure "bottlenecks" in dynamic regions
International airports, deep-water seaport clusters and dozens of industrial parks are considered "golden advantages" for the growth of the southern Dong Nai region.
However, the paradox is that the place that is expected to become the dynamic area of the province and spread to the region is facing the "bottleneck" of unsynchronized, degraded and overloaded traffic infrastructure.
Road shortage, traffic jam in dynamic area
Many years ago, the southern part of the province formed industrial, urban, and mineral exploitation development zones, especially urban projects in Long Hung ward and Phuoc Tan ward. That process, along with the speed of urbanization and mechanical population growth, caused National Highway 51, Provincial Road 25B, and 769 to be frequently overloaded. After that, some routes such as Road 25C and Ton Duc Thang Street were newly invested, upgraded, and expanded, but only met the demand in the beginning, then continued to be congested, especially during rush hours.
Traffic connecting Ho Chi Minh City (old) and Ba Ria - Vung Tau (old) is almost entirely dependent on Dong Nai Bridge and Highway 51, while the road surface is narrow and degraded. Notably, Dong Nai has nearly 10km of border with Ho Chi Minh City but is almost divided by Dong Nai River and currently there is no bridge over the river connecting the two localities.
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| Proposed location for the Dong Nai 2 bridge project, connecting Ho Chi Minh City with Dong Nai |
Ms. Somhatai Panichewa, General Director of Amata Long Thanh City Company Limited, once shared: Dong Nai has great attraction to foreign investors thanks to its favorable geographical location, dynamic government, increasingly improving investment environment, along with the country's largest airport coming into operation. However, connecting traffic infrastructure is still a major limitation. Typically, Amata's project in Long Thanh has an area of more than 1,000 hectares, after many years of implementation, it is still stuck with land clearance and unsynchronized connecting infrastructure. Ms. Somhatai recommended speeding up the progress of completing traffic infrastructure, increasing connectivity to turn potential into competitive advantages in attracting investors and high-quality capital flows.
Provincial Party Committee member and Vice Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee Ho Van Ha admitted that traffic infrastructure is the biggest “bottleneck” for the socio -economic development of Dong Nai at present. Many roads should have been completed many years ago but are still not finished.
This limitation has also been mentioned many times at conferences, forums, and dialogues between provincial leaders and people and businesses.
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| The existing Dong Nai Bridge helps connect traffic between the provinces of Dong Nai (old), Ba Ria - Vung Tau (old) with Ho Chi Minh City (old), and Binh Duong (old). |
Inhibit development
The above situation not only affects travel, increases logistics costs for businesses and the investment environment, but also causes many potentials and advantages of the province to not be effectively exploited. The urbanization speed of the region and the province is affected due to the slow implementation of planned urban and industrial park projects.
It is easy to see that in the wards of Long Hung, Phuoc Tan, Tam Phuoc, although a series of projects with scale of hundreds to thousands of hectares have been formed, few people live there; real estate prices in the area along the river on the Dong Nai side and the opposite bank of Ho Chi Minh City have a big difference, even though they are only separated by a river. The main reason is said to be the lack of connecting infrastructure.
Regarding regional connectivity, Dong Nai has not yet promoted its role as the “eastern gateway” of Ho Chi Minh City. The lack of bridges and inter-provincial roads has left the old Nhon Trach and old Long Thanh areas, especially Long Hung and Phuoc Tan, almost isolated, even though they are only a few hundred meters from Ho Chi Minh City.
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| National Highway 51 through Dong Nai, the vital route connecting Dong Nai with Ho Chi Minh City, is currently overloaded and degraded. |
Recognizing this issue, in the Dong Nai Provincial Planning for the period 2021-2030, with a vision to 2050, along with the general urban plans at the district level (old) and zoning plans, a series of strategic traffic projects have been updated and implemented by the province with the expectation of removing "bottlenecks" and "opening the way" for development in the Southern region.
Recently, at the end of October 2025, Dong Nai approved the assignment of Construction Corporation No. 1 - JSC (CC1) as the investor to propose 2 projects: Cat Lai Bridge and Long Hung Bridge (Dong Nai 2 Bridge), connecting Dong Nai with Ho Chi Minh City. The Provincial Construction Investment Project Management Board, along with relevant departments and branches, are coordinating with the investor to carry out procedures according to the process.
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| Leaders of Dong Nai Provincial Party Committee and leaders of Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee discussed traffic connection solutions at a conference held on October 21. |
According to Dong Nai Provincial Party Secretary Vu Hong Van, Head of the Provincial National Assembly Delegation, Dong Nai currently has the 9th largest area, 5th largest population and 4th largest economic scale in the country. The transport infrastructure system has all 5 modes: road, air, rail, inland waterway and sea. This is a rare advantage for development.
To effectively exploit this potential and advantage, the Resolution of the 1st Congress of the Dong Nai Provincial Party Committee, term 2025-2030, identified infrastructure, especially transport infrastructure, as one of the breakthrough development tasks. Immediately after the congress, the Dong Nai Provincial Party Committee coordinated with the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee to organize a conference to discuss solutions to connect transport infrastructure between the two localities.
PV
Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/kinh-te/202510/ket-noi-giao-thong-loi-mo-cho-vung-dong-luc-so-1-dong-nai-a4001ab/
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