Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has asked the Ministry of Transport to urgently complete its report on financing and building Long Thanh International Airport in southern Dong Nai Province.

All parties concerned should be consulted and their opinions taken into account before the report is submitted to the Prime Minister on August 20, the Deputy PM said on Aug. 11.

He advised that ministries of Planning and Investment and Transport as well as relevant agencies petition the PM for establishing a State Assessment Council to examine the investment report.

Under an approved master plan officially made pubic last August, the airport will be built in Dong Nai Province's Long Thanh District, some 40km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

The new airport will function as an entrepot in the Southeast Asian region, able to handle 100 million passengers and 5 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2030.

The 5000ha airport will also have the capacity to allow massive jumbo jets like the A380-800 to land and take off.

Preparatory works for the country's biggest airport, including financial arrangements, are already underway. The Southern Airport Corporation is in charge of the project development.

Construction of the airport is scheduled to start in 2015 and completed in three phases.

The first phase, carried out between 2015 and 2020, will involve an investment of 6.74 billion USD. At the end of this phase, the airport will be able to handle 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo every year.

At the end of the second phase the airport will have three runways and the ability to handle 50 million passengers and 1.5 million tonnes of cargo.

When the final phase is complete, it will have four runways and four terminals with the targeted capacity of handling 100 million passengers and 5 million tonnes of cargo per annum.

The plan also envisages that the Long Thanh International Airport will be connected to HCM City and other neighbouring provinces by a network of highways and express railway routes, some already under construction.-VNA