To deal with chronic traffic congestion on a major road leading to CatLai Port in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City is seeking approval from theGovernment to build an overpass and a tunnel there, the Saigon TimesDaily reports.

In its recent document submitted to theGovernment, HCM City proposes implementing the project at My ThuyRoundabout using capital advanced by the investor and paid by the citylater. The deferred payment will come with interest.

As proposed,the first phase of the project will consist of an overpass in thedirection of Belt Road No. 2 and a tunnel underneath the existingroundabout. The investment cost of phase one is estimated at 770 billionVND (over 35.3 million USD) as no site clearance and compensation arerequired.

The city wants to pick an investor via a tender tocarry out the first phase of the project. The selected investor willhave to advance finance for the project and the city will pay later withinterest within 2-5 years as other investment formats are not viable.

Thecity explains in the document that there will be many challenges andlegal conditions when implementing the project under the public-privatepartnership (PPP) format. It is not easy to execute the project underthe build-operate-transfer (BOT), build-transfer-lease (BTL),build-lease-transfer (BLT) and build-transfer (BT) models since the cityis copping with budget constraints and lacking in land to embrace theland-for-infrastructure format.

Heavy traffic jams havefrequently been seen on the roads leading to Cat Lai Port in the pastmonths, with the most recent jam reported on June 16.

Accordingto the Daily, at a meeting with the Ministry of Transport in the middleof this month, Director of the HCM City Department of Transport NguyenThanh Chung said the number of container trucks moving to and from theport had surged since early last month, from 12,000 trucks to 20,000trucks a day.-VNA