Mega tourism project feeling small to look

New City Properties Development Company, the investor behind Vietnam’s largest tourism project, is feeling the heat from site clearance difficulties.
Frank Cheung, general manager of New City, said site clearance challenges were blocking construction of the $4.3 billion Phu Yen High Grade Tourism Complex project in central Phu Yen province.
The company had already cleared more than 80 per cent of the project site, which was licenced in 2008 and would cover 565 hectares, said Cheung.
According to government regulations, provincial authorities are in charge of clearing sites for investment projects. However, at present most local authorities ask investors to compensate and clear the site in advance. Then, the investor will claw back the costs through tax and land rental exemptions.
For New City, the site clearance is currently the biggest challenge to the project’s development.
“It is taking more time than we thought. A lot of difficulties surfaced in the process of compensation delaying different construction items,” said Cheung.
During 2010 New City started the first stage of the project with a road connecting the project site with National Road 1A already completed.
“This year, the company will continue with the compensation procedure and to clean up the ground surface as well as building some items such public transportation, infrastructure, recreation parks and vacation villages,” said Cheung.
However, he added the construction process depended on site clearance.
“Sometime they [local residents] ask us to compensate at a price, but sometimes yhey change their minds and require a different price. It is really hard to understand them,” he added.
He added complication is some of the remaining land to be cleared is a burial site.
Nguyen Chi Hien, director of Phu Yen Department of Planning and Investment, said it could take a long time to remove tombs.
New City expects the project to be operational in 2013. In the first stage, it plans to build three, four-star hotels with 900 rooms and four, five star-hotels with 2,250 rooms.