High hopes for south coast highway link

Construction of a coastal highway joining Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand will begin in March 2010.
With support from the Asian Development Bank, work is about to begin on an upgraded coastal highway from Bangkok through Chon Buri and Trat provinces (Thailand), Koh Kong, Kampot and Kep provinces (Cambodia) and Vietnam’s Kien Giang and Ca Mau provinces.
The thousand kilometer road will greatly improve the access of people in relatively poor provinces in the three countries to urban centers, says ADB economist Eric Sidgwick. Officials of provinces where the road will pass and many Vietnamese and foreign economists emphasize that the road will bring essential social services to these provinces and promote their economic integration and competitiveness.
In Vietnam, the coastal highway plan approved by the Ministry of Transportation is for a 220 kilometer route along the Gulf of Siam, from Ha Tien (Kien Giang) to Nam Can (Ca Mau), with investment capital of $440 million. It will built in two phases, improving existing roads.
The first phase will see the construction of the highway between Rach Gia, the province seat of Kien Giang, and Ca Mau City, including a bypass around Rach Gia. This phase will be funded by $133 million in loans provided by South Korea.
In the second phase, the upgraded highway will be extended south from Ca Mau City through the U Minh Forest to the new gas-electricity-fertilizer complex and on to Nam Can at the nation’s southern extremity. Also in the second phase, the road northwest from Rach Gia City to the border will be upgraded and linked to improved Cambodian highways to Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and beyond to Thailand.
Kien Giang Chairman Bui Ngoc Suong said that the 166 kilometer segment in his province will complete the renovation of the province’s transportation infrastructure, complementing improved north-south highways. Two bridges will span the Cai Lon and Cai Be rivers, replacing the Tac Cau ferry and facilitating the development of the Ca Mau peninsula.
Suong said “Kien Giang is building trading and industrial complexes, including a free-tariff zone at the Ha Tien border crossing and our Thanh Loc Industrial Zone to take advantage of opportunities for development offered by the road.”
According to Suong, bidding packages for the initial two sections of road will be offered on February 23 and construction will start by June 2010. Each bidding package will cost over one trillion dong (around $52.6 million).
In Kien Giang, over 1000 families are being relocated to free land for this project. Nearly eighty percent of site clearance has been completed.
Deputy director of the Ca Mau Department of Transportation Nguyen Tu Phuong says that in his province nearly 1070 households must move to new places and they will receive compensation of nearly 500 billion dong.
Suong and Duong Tien Dung, Ca Mau’s vice chairman, both express optimism that the new highway road will stimulate economic and tourism integration of their provinces with other countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.”
Meanwhile, Duong Tuan Minh, general director of the My Thuan project management unit, said that the 52 kilometer road section running through the U Minh Forest area will help prevent forest fires in Ca Mau in the dry season.
An official from the Centre for Transportation Research and Development called the new highway a vital link in the Mekong Delta road transport network. Major infrastructure projects like the HCM City-Trung Luong expressway and suspension bridges at Can Tho and Rach Mieu, an upgraded highway from Can Tho to Rach Gia, and the Quan Lo – Phung Hiep road are vastly speeding movement of goods and people throughout the Delta region.
Director Ayumi Konishi of ADB Vietnam emphasized that the strengthening of connections via infrastructure development will stimulate economic integration and facilitate provision of basic social services to poor people.