Ho Chi Minh City lacks inland waterway transport infrastructure development projects.

According to Mr. Vo Hoang Ngan, Director of the Department of Construction of Ho Chi Minh City, from the beginning of the year to the end of September, the department has chaired, organized and submitted to the competent authority for decision on investment policies for 11 projects, including very important projects such as: Ring Road 4 project, Binh Tien bridge and 4 BOT projects to expand National Highway 1, National Highway 13, National Highway 22 and the North-South direct road. Currently, the Department of Construction is continuing to prepare for investment in the period 2026-2030 about 154 transport infrastructure projects with 29 group A projects.

In addition, the Department of Construction also provided specialized comments on more than 160 investment project dossiers and in the first 9 months of the year, 26 projects were started and 30 infrastructure projects were completed and put into use.

In the fourth quarter, the Department of Construction continued to bid to start 20 more projects and complete and put into use 25 infrastructure works such as the Ho Chi Minh City - Moc Bai Expressway Project, the Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway interchange with National Highway 50, Ring Road 2, the expansion of the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh - Dau Giay Expressway connection road... These works mainly focus on urban infrastructure, road and railway traffic infrastructure, very few works serve waterway traffic infrastructure.

On October 15, Mr. Vo Khanh Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Construction, said: The Department of Construction has advised the City People's Committee to issue a list of key projects and works on transportation in the 2021-2025 period and establish a Steering Committee to focus on monitoring progress; urging and promptly removing difficulties for each project. At the same time, evaluate the implementation results of agencies and units to speed up the construction progress and disburse assigned capital.

According to Mr. Vo Khanh Hung, in the years 2021-2025, the city has focused on accelerating the construction progress, completing and putting into use 69 key traffic projects on roads and railways, contributing to reducing traffic congestion and accidents, enhancing regional connectivity and socio -economic development of the city as well as neighboring localities. 35 other traffic works and projects have been started and implemented, mainly in the road sector.

While road traffic is seriously overloaded, with 336 points at risk of traffic congestion in the area, of which 186 points are at high risk of traffic congestion, in recent years the development of inland waterway traffic infrastructure in the city has not received due attention.

According to Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Ho Chi Minh City is a southern river city with the advantage of hundreds of large rivers, canals and streams. However, among hundreds of recently invested traffic projects, only a few projects are related to inland waterways such as Tham Luong canal, Doi canal, Xuyen Tam canal and Van Thanh canal projects.

However, apart from Tham Luong canal, which has a number of marinas, the remaining three canals mainly stop at improving the environmental landscape, solving pollution and creating road traffic corridors along the canal.

Although the environmental improvement and dredging of the Nhieu Loc - Thi Nghe, Ben Nghe - Tau Hu, and Tan Hoa - Lo Gom canals had been completed, there was almost no development in waterway transport. Even the exploitation of transporting tourists along the canals was still carried out on a small scale and vaguely.

Cat Lai port area has over 20 thousand container trucks and large trucks entering and leaving the port every day. Many years ago, Ho Chi Minh City had to establish a rapid response team to solve the traffic congestion problem in this area. However, in recent years, Ho Chi Minh City has had almost no effective solution to "push these goods into the river".

According to the report of the City People's Committee, from the beginning of the year to the end of September, the volume of goods passing through seaports in the area reached more than 130 million tons, an increase of over 7.5%, while the volume of goods transported by inland waterways only reached more than 53 million tons. Goods transported by inland waterways are mainly transshipment activities to ports, transporting construction materials and consumer goods, not focusing on transporting containers or bulk cargo from ports to localities.

Recently, Ho Chi Minh City has invested in upgrading two old bridges, Binh Phuoc 1 Bridge and Binh Trieu Bridge. The old Hoa An Bridge in Dong Nai is still being maintained. Similarly, the transportation of goods by river from Ho Chi Minh City to Tay Ninh and down to the Mekong Delta on the Vam Co Dong River has long been "blocked" by the old Ben Luc Bridge.

The lack of infrastructure for warehouses and access to riverside wharves has made the transportation of goods on inland waterways unable to compete with roads, even though the transportation cost is almost half cheaper. The continuous accumulation of goods on roads is one of the reasons for the increasingly serious traffic congestion in Ho Chi Minh City.

On October 6, Mr. Bui Xuan Cuong, Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee, pointed out: One of the main reasons leading to the above situation is the high demand for transporting goods and traffic volume. More than ten years ago, the main river port of the city and the whole region, Phu Dinh port, with the capacity to serve about 30 small ships and barges at the same time, with a port capacity of 2.5 million tons of goods/year, was built.

However, it is completely unreasonable that this river port is located on a level 3 inland waterway, with shallow and narrow channels and can only receive small boats and barges with a maximum tonnage of 375 tons. The inland waterway infrastructure is not developed, so the number of newly registered vehicles in the area in the first 9 months of the year stopped at only 225 watercraft with 221 cargo ships, which is also understandable.

Source: https://cand.com.vn/Giao-thong/tp-ho-chi-minh-thieu-vang-du-an-phat-trien-ha-tang-van-tai-thuy-noi-dia-i785630/