The Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay expressway. — Photo htv

HA NOI (Biz Hub)— The transport sector would focus on infrastructure investments in the new year, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said on Saturday in a meeting on key transportation projects.

During his speech over the weekend in Ha Noi, Hai said he highly appreciated the sector's efforts to accomplish some major projects to solve the country's key traffic bottlenecks, particularly the Noi Bai-Lao Cai expressway, the Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay expressway and the new Noi Bai International Airport terminal.

Hai urged the Ministry of Transport to work closely with local authorities and agencies to speed up land clearance and keep projects on schedule.

He asked the MOT to come up with long-term land use projects and financial mechanisms to attract investments from public and private sectors, and foreign investors as well.

Also, the MOT needed to work with the Ministry of Planning and Investment to come up with detailed counterpart fund plans to submit to the Government, Hai said.

About 170 projects would be implemented in 2015, Hai said. They would require a large amount of State funding. Thus, prioritising projects and implementing them efficiently would be essential.

"We now need more than VND12.5 trillion (US$585 million) in counterpart funds," Hai said. "But at present only about VND5.6 trillion ($262 million) is available."

According to Transport Minister Dinh La Thang, Viet Nam launched 31 major projects in 2014. The State funded 26 of them, and five used the build-operate-transfer model. In 2014, the ministry spent VND39.1 trillion ($1.5 billion) on 19 build-operate-transfer projects - 22 per cent more than originally planned. — VNS