The Vietnam Industrial and Commercial Bank (Vietinbank) is set to provide a credit package worth over 110 billion VND (roughly 6.1 million USD) to the Petroleum Technical Services Corporation (PTSC) to build the new Hon La port.

This was the result of a contract signed between Vietinbank and the PTSC on September 7 in the central province of Quang Binh, where the Hon La port is located.

The 10-year loan will be used to upgrade the 94,000 m2 port to enable it to handle major cargo vessels up to 10,000 DWT.

By 2010, the port is expected to manage 1.8 million tonnes of cargo a year and become the major transit port for 1.4 million tonnes of cement en route to Laos .

The Vietinbank’s loan for the upgrade is part of the second phase of the ports face lift and will cost almost 1.3 trillion VND. It aims to turn Hon La into a first class port, able to berth heavy freighters of over 100,000 tonnes.

The Hon La port project was made public in November 2008 and is located in the Hon La economic zone in Quang Binh province.

The project is just three kilometres away from national highway 1A, 153 km from the Cha Lo border gate and 301 km from the Laos-Thai border. It is also just 5-6 nautical miles away from the sea and 360 nautical miles from the East Sea international shipping lane, equidistant from the ports of Haiphong in the north and Da Nang in the central region.

All this places Hon La port in a strategic position, both domestically and regionally./.