Some airports have overloaded infrastructure, said Nguyễn Anh Dũng, deputy director of the Department of Planning and Investment, Ministry of Transport at a seminar on mobilising resources for aviation infrastructure development on Friday.

 

Việt Nam is currently operating 22 airports, of which 21 are managed by the State-owned Airports Corporation of Việt Nam (ACV), Dũng said.

 

One airport Việt Nam has called and mobilised for investment in the PPP form is Vân Đồn Airport in Quảng Ninh Province.

 

The growth rate of the country's aviation industry is very high, averaging 16-18 per cent per year in the 2011-2019/2020 period, assessed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as the fastest-growing aviation industry in Southeast Asia and ranked fifth in the world.

 

The very fast development of air transport has put pressure on the airport infrastructure.

 

In the 2011-19 period, the investment results in Việt Nam's aviation infrastructure achieved the designed capacity for airports of 95 million passengers per year.

 

While in fact, the highest time before COVID-19 in 2019, the output through Vietnamese airports reached 116.5 million passengers per year.

 

"With such traffic, some of our airports have overloaded infrastructure, focusing mainly on the major hub airports of the country, namely Tân Sơn Nhất, Nội Bai, Cam Ranh and Đà Nẵng,” Dũng said.

 

"Our capital mobilised into these airports is mainly from the State budget and State-owned enterprises," he added.

 

In the past, VNĐ95 trillion (US$4 million) has been attracted, of which the State budget is about 13.5 per cent, the rest is capital from ACV.

 

Phạm Ngọc Sáu, former Director of Vân Đồn International Airport, said that in terms of aviation output, there are currently about 100 million passengers per year.

 

According to the Government's recent plan, there will be 279.5 million visitors by 2030, increasing by 2.7 times.

 

In fact, the growth rate of the aviation industry is very fast. Việt Nam is one of the five countries with an average growth rate of 17-20 per cent per year.

 

With such a rate, it only took us about three to five years to double the number of visitors, Sáu said.

 

"If we did not find solutions to implement projects in 2024-2025 to put into operation in 2027-2028, then we would continue to be overloaded in 2030," he noted. — VNS