The southern coastal province of Kien Giang plans to build a tourist port to accommodate vessels of up to 6,000 passengers in its Phu Quoc Island District under the Public – Private Partnership (PPP) model.
The province's leaders and representatives from Ministry of Transport decided in a recent meeting that a VND1.2 trillion (US$56.4 million)) port would be built in Duong Dong town on the island, according to the Viet Nam Economic Times.
The province has asked Vingroup to invest in the project. No State funds will be used.
Nguyen Thanh Son, secretary of Kien Giang Province's Party Committee, said the province could not rely on annual budget allocations from the Government and the investment in the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) method would not be effective because of the small amount of revenue collected from passenger boats.
Son said the province had worked with the corporation, and had suggested a consulting company to conduct research on how much the company and the local government should spend.
It is expected that the port would be able to accommodate the largest cruisers in the world.
The port would help develop the tourism industry on the island.
The tourist and container port would have an 800-metre L-shaped breakwater to make sure the port can receive cruisers year-round and a 400-metre pier and 1,200-metre approach bridge to the pier.
The project details will be submitted to the Ministry of Transport on October 20 and later to the Government for approval.
Phu Quoc Island is located near the Singapore – Thailand – Viet Nam – Northeast Asia tourism route, used by 19 marine transport companies.
It is expected that the number of tourists to Phu Quoc by sea will increase annually from 105,000 to 190,000 until 2020, and to 550,000 visitors by 2030.
