Hanoi (VNA) - Deputy Prime Minist🐻er Trinh Dinh Dung on September 29 afternoon officially ordere♈d the technical opening of the Bac Giang – Lang son expressway project.

The Bac Giang – Lang son expressway project officially got the technical opening on September 29 afternoon, shortening the time of traveling from Hanoi to Lang Son from 3.5 hours to about 2.5 hours compared to the old Highway 1. According to Ho Minh Hoang, President of the Deo Ca Group, the Bac Giang – Lang son expressway project was started in 2015. However, investors of that stage were poor in resources and management ability and, as a result, the pace was nearly 2 years slower (by June 2017, the Highway 1 segment was only 13 percent of the output and the expressway segment was not implemented). The top investor of the stage was Nguyen Van Duong (of the UDIC company) has been prosecuted in a legal case of high-tech gambling. The project fell into a complete stagnation and many contractors were driven to the verge of bankruptcy as they had advanced hundreds of billions of VND to implement the project. In June 2017, on the basis of a report by the Ministry of Transport, the new investor of the Deo Ca Group who had been invited to join the project tabled a solution to untangle the knots in the project such as adjusting the design, arranging public service lanes, dealing with credit, dismissing contractors of poor capacity, and disbursing funds for a series of contractors. This helped “revive” those participating contractors. With its experiences in removing bottlenecks commonly seen in the previous projects, the investor directed powerful contractors to join hands and by now, the project has been completed and the Bac Giang – Lang Son expressway opened (the Bac Giang – Chi Lang section). Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy PM Dung held that the breakthrough in terms of traffic infrastructure, especially expressway to raise the transport capacity, reduce product costs and improve the competitiveness, is the factor that has mobilized the resources for economic development, along with the institutions on business environment, thus helping raise the quality of the life of the people. “According to the strategy on the development of the expressway system, our country will have about 6,411km throughout the country by 2030, in which 2,000km will be open to traffic by 2020 and another 1,000km by 2030. So far, the whole country has completed over 1,000km of expressways. The development of expressways helps accelerate the socio-economic development and ensure security and defence of the localities crossed by the projects,” the official said. Stressing that the Bac Giang – Lang Son expressway project is an important traffic artery, one of the gateways for trade on the land between Vietnam and countries in the region, the official affirmed that when completed in the near future, the 30-km Chi Lang – Huu Nghi section will connect the whole Hanoi – Lang Son expressway. Put into commercial utilization, the expressway will shorten the travel time, ease congestion and push up the development of production and tourism in the country’s northeastern area. The Deputy PM also spoke highly of the efforts by localities in clearing the site, as well as the coordination of the investors and contractors, engineers and workers in the project. At the same time, he asked the sides involved to finish the remaining work of the project so as to complete the project as well as to start collecting toll./.