20 years on, HCMC pledges year-end site clearance for Safari park

Ho Chi Minh City officials pledged Thursday to complete land clearance by the year-end for the Saigon Safari Park project in Cu Chi district, almost 20 years after it was licensed.

In a meeting with a National Assembly supervisory team, HCMC People’s Committee leaders said the city would spend an additional VND25 billion ($1.07 million) to complete land compensation for the remaining 15 households on the project site.

Once the land was cleared, the city will organise a bid to select investors, they said.

The project, covering 456 hectares in An Nhon Tay commune, Cu Chi district, had an original estimated investment capital of $500 million. As initially planned, it would be a place to display, store, research, conserve and breed rare plant and animal species from around the world.

The project needed to reclaim land from 705 households, of which 443 owned residential properties and the remaining 262 had agricultural land.

Though over VND580 billion ($24.85 million) had been spent on compensation by 2007 and 97% of the land clearance work was done by then, the project has stayed idle since because of petitions and disputes over the compensation offered.

Moreover, the investor, Thao Cam Vien Company Ltd., lacked the financial capability for such a big project, which was licensed in 2004.

After the cleared land was left idle and wild, it was re-occupied by several households, and the development of housing for relocation of households has been very slow.

In 2016, HCMC authorities approved in principle that Vinpearl JSC, a hospitality company belonging to Vietnam's largest private conglomerate Vingroup, researches the project. Vinpearl, however, quit the research work later.

In June 2019, Government Inspectors identified several violations related to the project, including an adequate appraisal process which led to the selection of an unqualified investor. In December 2021, Cu Chi district proposed that city authorities change the plan and make it a high-tech industrial park, instead.

In March this year, FLC Group proposed that it researches a project to develop a multi-function international standard Safari complex, but there is no information on the proposal’s status.

In late March, Trinh Van Quyet, then chairman of the group, was arrested on charges of “manipulating” and “concealing information in securities activities”.