94% of land cleared for Long Thanh airport: report

A report by Long Thanh district in Dong Nai province says it has handed over 94% of the land earmarked for building the Long Thanh International Airport.

The report says the district has approved land clearance compensation worth VND12,500 billion ($536 million) for 6,000 cases. Of this, VND12 billion in compensation fund has been handed over to 5,400 cases.

It also says that the district has handed over 2,378 hectares of land to the South Airports Authority and Airports Corporation of Vietnam, or nearly 94% of the project phase 1 requirement, in nine instalments.

While the land clearance progress has failed to meet the government’s deadline of June 30, 2022, district authorities say the process has been slow for several reasons including the very large area that has to be reclaimed, and the fact that many people have transferred their land use rights on handwritten papers, making verification for compensation and price determination very difficult.

Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh in May requested top priority must be given to opening Long Thanh International Airport as a key national project in southern Vietnam by 2025.

June 30, 2022 is the deadline for site clearance completion, Thanh stated in a release on May 18. His conclusions also included a target of starting work on a runway and one passenger terminal in the fourth quarter of this year.

Long Thanh airport, about 40 kilometers to the east of HCMC, will help relieve overload at the southern economic hub’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport. It is designed to receive 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tons of cargo each year in the first phase. Roughly $5 billion is estimated for the first phase’s investment.

The whole project will cover more than 5,580 hectares across up to six communes in Long Thanh district. Once fully completed by 2050, it would be able to handle 100 million passengers and five million tons of cargo annually.