Le Khac Huynh, chief of HCM City Urban Railway Management Board said that tenders for the metro section No 1 (Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien) are being organised, including bids for building underground metro lines, overhead metro and purchasing trains, equipments and depot. According to the direction of HCM City People's Committee, the urban railway management board will start work on overhead metro sections of Metro No 1 in the end of 2010.

Like all infrastructure construction projects, the compensation and ground clearance is very complex and difficult. To date, the Metro No 1 will pass the districts of 1, Binh Thanh, 2, Thu Duc, and 9, but only ground clearance on Binh Thanh Dist has been done. Reportedly, total 162 households in Binh Thanh Dist received the compensation money and the ground was handed over to the investors already.

HCM City Metro section No 1 is expected to complete in 2014 and start operation in one year later. Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien metro line is 19.7 kilometres long with the carrying capacity of 526,000 passengers a day.

HCM City Metro section No 2 (An Suong-Thu Thiem) was funded total 500 million euro by three banks namely German development bank Kfw, European Investment Bank (EIB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB). HCM City Urban Railway Management Board reported that the above donors visited HCM City for two times to appraise the metro project awaited for signing the official investment lending agreement by late 2010. The metro line No 2 is 19 kilometres of length, starting from Thu Thiem (Dist 2) and ending at Tay Ninh coach station (An Suong), which is broken into two construction phases: first phase to build a 12-km metro section from central Ben Thanh across Pham Hong Thai-August Revolution-Truong Chinh to Tham Luong depot (Dist 12), second phase to build metro from Tham Luong to An Suong (Dist 12) and from Ben Thanh to Thu Thiem (Dist 2).

Of three tramway sections as planned, Tramway No 1 attracted investors already. On April 9, 2008, director of HCM City Traffic and Transport Department, Tran Quang Phuong signed MoU with the associated contractor group including Vietnamese firm Thanh Dan... about building tramway No 1 (Saigon-Cho Lon-Western Coach Station). The associated contractor now has two more members BOT Phu My Bridge Co (PMC) and Hanoi Construction Corp.

Metro project aims to help HCM City become one of civilised and modern city and a centre of industry, service, science, technology in the region and Asean.

In related news, HCM City Metro Section No 5 from Saigon Bridge to Can Giuoc Coach Station of 17 kilometres in length is the third section calling the investment capital. Last December 15, Spanish government signed a MoU with Vietnamese government to finance 500 million euro to the HCM City urban metro project. Huynh said that the prime minister approved the plan of using Spain's ODA supply for the Metro Section No 5.

Remaining metro lines including Ben Thanh-Tan Kien (3A section-16 kilometres), Ben Thanh-Hiep Binh Phuoc (3B-12 kilometres), Go Vap-Dist 7 (24 kilometres) are in the process of investment project drawing-up to look for investment and construction partners.

Thanh Nien - April 9, 2010