The Hai Phong International Seaport will be a pilot Private and Public Partner (PPP) investment project, with the State sourcing funds from Japanese official development assistance.

The project will consist of two packages. The first, valued at 260 million USD, will build the seaport infrastructure with loans from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The second, worth 165 million USD will be invested by the Vietnam Shipping Corporation (Vinalines) and will cover the construction of two container ports.

It is the second infrastructure project to get investment in this form, following the construction of the Dau Giay-Phan Thiet express road at a cost of over 14.3 trillion VND (794 million USD), for which the Bitexco company is the private investor.

The Head of the Infrastructure and Urban Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), Nguyen Trong Tin, said with limited State budgets, the PPP model should be a promising and effective solution.

He added that the MPI is drafting the upgrade of Decree 78 to submit it to the Government by 2010. The resolution, issued in 2007, is on BOT (building, operating, transferring) investment which is similar to the PPP model but on a limited scale.

His disclosure of the plan was in response to a call for a complete and transparent legal framework on the PPP investment model from the Vietnam Expressway Corporation, which has rich experience in infrastructure projects.

Tin also said the MPI initiated the establishment of an infrastructure investment fund operating on the PPP model in an effort to speed up the deployment of infrastructure projects.

The PPP model is likely to expand to social infrastructure projects, such as those in safe water supplies and environmental pollution./.