Ben Thanh Real Estate Investment Joint Stock Co (Ben Thanh Land) and Grand Capital Investment Fund are jointly introducing five-star apartments in HCM City these days.

The five-star Saigon Luxury Apartment is part of Ben Thanh Times Square project. The 22 story building includes 88 apartments located at No 172-174 Ky Con in HCM City’s Dist 1.

Total area is 18,000 square metres with two basements for parking and other facilities such as trade centre, mini supermarkets, café, and office for lease, swimming pool, spa and restaurants.

The Housing and Urban Development Corp (HUD) officially started construction project of Phu My new urban area in Nghia Chanh Ward, Quang Ngai City, Quang Ngai province on January 30, 2010.

The new urban area will be built on an area of 170 hectares, including Green Park, lake, apartment buildings, and villas. In addition, in the new urban area, there will be a resettlement area, social houses, and apartments for low-income residents with the total floor area of 1.2 million square metres.

The project’s total investment capital is calculated at 1.25 trillion dong. The construction of this new urban area is expected to last until 2013.

PetroVietnam Fertiliser Chemicals Corp (PVFCCo), PetroVietnam Finance Joint Stock Corp (PVFC) and PetroVietnam Oil Corp (PV Oil) started construction work on an official building in Q1, HCM City on January 30, 2010.

The project’s investor was PetroVietnam Fertiliser Chemicals Corp (PVFCCo), and PVFC as the main contractor. The new office building included three basements and 14 storeys with total construction area of 16,355 square metres, and campus area of about 1,750 square metres.

The total investment capital for this project was estimated at 758 billion dong, in which PVFCCo contributed 33 percent of the total, PVFC of 42 percent and PV Oil of 25 percent.

The new office building is expected to be opened and put into operation in the end of Q1 of 2011.

Six Senses Resorts and Spas has entered into an agreement with Ninh Van Bay Travel Real Estate Joint Stock Company for the management of two new luxury resorts in Vietnam.

Six Senses Latitude Saigon River, which is located in Dong Nai Province, is scheduled to commence operations by the second quarter of 2011 while Six Senses Latitude Phu Quoc, located in Kien Gang Province, is envisaged to open in 2012.

Currently, Six Senses manages the Six Senses Hideaway Ninh Van Bay in Nha Trang, which is owned by Ninh Van Bay. (hvs.com)

The construction of the new Nam Dinh – Phu Ly road started on January 29 in Nam Dinh city with the Tasco Joint Stock Company as its investor.

The road, 25 kilometres in length, has a total investment capital of nearly VND 3 trillion.

According to the investor’s commitment, the road will have been put into operation by 2014, making a contribution to avoiding traffic jams and minimising traffic accidents and creating opportunities for investment attraction and socio-economic development in Nam Dinh and Ha Nam provinces and their surrounding provinces in the southern area of the Red River Delta.

Two new wind power plants to produce 74 megawatts of power will be constructed in Binh Thuan Province by year-end, raising the number of renewable energy projects in the province to three, said Dinh Huy Hiep, vice director of the province’s Department of Industry and Trade.Hiep said the two new wind power projects were the 50-megawatt Thuan Nhien Phong Plant developed by Asia Renewable Energy Joint Stock Company in Bac Binh District and a plant developed by Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) in Tuy Phong District with a generation capacity of 24 megawatts.

Hiep told the Daily on Thursday that Binh Thuan had an operational wind power plant in Tuy Phong with an electricity output of 7.5 megawatts deployed by Vietnam Renewable Energy Joint Stock Company (REVN).

He said REVN expected to install another 15 wind turbines at its plant to increase capacity to 30 megawatts.

According to the department, total wind power reserves in Binh Thuan are around 4,000 megawatts and the province has approved 12 new wind power projects totaling 1,500 megawatts.

However, many of the potential areas for developing wind power overlap with titanium reserves, causing the province to limit new wind power projects.

To help solve this problem, the province last week established the Binh Thuan Wind Energy Association to accelerate the development of local renewable energy as an optimal solution for future energy supply.

Hiep said the key objectives of the new association in 2010 would be solving the location question and helping to prepare new policies and an overall plan to develop the green energy.

The association this year will cooperate with Germany’s GTZ to continue research into technologies to exploit wind power reserves in the province.

A new mega township kicked-off last week in Haiphong, a city bogged down by a list of long-delayed property projects.

The VND29 trillion ($1.6 billion) Haiphong Cement Township will be built on 78.5 hectares, part of the old Haiphong Cement Factory. Developed by Vietnam National Cement Corporation, the 35-storey towers complex will offer condominiums, a five-star hotel, commercial, financial and office space.
The township will provide accommodation for at least 2,000 households and 1,300 households for Haiphong Cement Company staff. The project has been encouraged by the government due to its policy to move industrial companies’ offices and headquarters out of the city.

The project got off the ground at the time when at least 10 large property projects in Haiphong, licenced in late 2007 and 2008, have been left on the drawing board after ground-breaking ceremonies. Other developers have already decided to downscale their projects and lower apartment prices.

A typical case of the long-delayed property projects is Our City, an urban area development belonging to Hong Kong’s Qiafeng Group, which received a licence with initial investment capital of $85 million in April, 2005.

Three years later, construction started on the project’s 43ha site in Duong Kinh district. But since the ground-breaking ceremony, the project’s site remains empty. The developer is now seeking an agreement with the municipal authorities to downscale the project.

Chinese investor Khai De has also built nothing since its ground-breaking ceremony for its $300 million apartment and trading complex in Kien An district. Initially, the investor planned to build seventeen, 18-storey buildings with floor space of 300,000sqm, to target medium to high-income earners in the port city. But, Khai De has recently decided to downscale two-thirds of the buildings to six-12 stories.

Other delayed real estate projects in Haiphong include Vincom office, apartment, hotel and trading complex with a registered investment capital of VND1.4 trillion ($786 million), the Dong Thang Trading Centre project developed by Dong Thang International Company and 432 units Cozy Ville residential project.

Developers attributed project delays largely to the global financial crisis and land clearance issues. However, Haiphong Real Estate Association chairmand Nguyen Ngoc Thanh said frozen real estate projects in Haiphong were also hampered by the fact that they did meet local demands.
“It seems that property developers when deciding to enter the Haiphong market wanted to make their names rather than carefully investigating whether their products could fit in with local demand or not. As a consequence, when the real estate market in Haiphong hit a standstill, developers realised their shortcomings and put their projects on hold,” said Thanh.

In fact, according to Thanh, most registered real estate projects in Haiphong offered high-end villas and apartments at prices which local residents could not afford. The Cozy Ville serviced residence project, for example, launched the sale of its 432 apartments right after the ground-breaking ceremony, but the project was soon left on the drawing board due to a lack of buyer interest.
Khai De plans to sell units from its 18-storey buildings at a minimum price of VND700 million ($38,888), but the price has proven to be too expensive. The demand for accommodation in Haiphong is also not as high as in other major cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City because of a limited number of foreign investment projects.

As a result, developers have been forced to adjust their business plans satisfy the local market. Both Khai De and Qiafeng have already decided to downscale their projects and lower their apartments’ prices.

The Vincom complex developer said it deliberately delayed implementing its project as it was negotiating so secure land next to its own site so the complex could be built on a larger scale.

Vincom Join Stock Company chairman Le Khac Hiep said: “We are considering redesigning Vincom complex in Haiphong to meet the local demand.” Le Van Chung, chairman of Vietnam National Cement Corporation, said: “It is very difficult to draw the picture of Haiphong property market in next several years. Today it is frozen, however, it can be hot within a night. We will try the best to soon complete the project and adjust the design within the process of construction.”
According to Chung, Haiphong’s population would be 1.5 million people in 2025 and the current residential projects would not satisfy local demand.

The Tien Loc Investment Group yesterday started the construction of the 25-storey Tien Loc – Ha Nam building, the highest so far in Phu Ly city, Ha Nam province.

On an area of 3,234 square metres, the building has a total construction area of over 27,000 square metres with 286 apartments.

It is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2012.

On the occasion, the Tien Loc Group and the Ha Nam Association of Fellow-countrymen and donors presented 300 gifts to poor households to welcome the Lunar New Year, with each gift valued at VND 200,000 and scholarships to three poor but outstanding pupils with each scholarship valued at VND 6 million.

The DFJ VinaCapital Fund on Jan. 28 signed a contract with TS24 Company to become its strategic partner.

The fund will contribute 2 million USD to help the investors improve its data and management systems, and its human resources.

It will also help diversify services, including tax declaration and payments on its Tax Online website.

The company will be able to prepare financial reports and deal with taxes on personal and corporate income, value-added taxes, natural resources and special consumption.

TS24 general director Nguyen Phan Viet Thuy said he was confident in the potential market of more than 10 million individuals with tax codes and another 500,000 enterprises.

It has signed an agreement with the card company with the card company DongA Bank VNBC for taxpayers to use cards issued by DongA Bank and other banks who join its ATM network for online payments.

DFJ VinaCapital, a 32 million USD joint venture between the IT group Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VinaCapital, specialises in making investments in the internet, telecommunications and media businesses.

Apart from this fund, VinaCapital also manages three others, the Vietnam Opportunity Fund (VOF), VinaLand Ltd (VNL) and Vietnam Infrastructure (VNI), which are listed at the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange.

Loans will be sought from the World Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for building an expressway linking Danang City with Quang Ngai Province at a cost of nearly US$2.5 billion.

Preparations are being pushed up so that work can start later this year on the project, which once in place will become part of the north-south expressway.

Under a notice the Government Office released last week, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai had agreed with the funding plan using loans from the World Bank and JICA. The amount will then be re-lent to the state-owned Vietnam Expressway Corporation to develop the 130-km long expressway running through Danang City, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces.

JICA is expected to finance the section from Danang to Tam Ky in Quang Nam Province stretching 65 kilometers, while the World Bank would fund for building 66 kilometers from Tam Ky to Quang Ngai. Counter capital from Vietnam will be used for project management, land clearance and resettlement costs.

According to the transport ministry, the Danang-Quang Ngai road requires a huge fund of US$2.48 billion, including US$1.5 billion for building the first phase of the project.

The feasibility study of the project has been finished by experts of Japan External Trade Organization, or Jetro, since 2007. However, the World Bank has asked for updating the study and the Project Management Unit 85, in charge of managing the investment project, has named Japan’s Nippon Koei as the consultant.

The management unit is expected to organize a bidding round to select contractors for the project in the early months this year. If everything goes smoothly, work will start the road late this year for the first-phase completion after three years.

The road has been designed for four lanes in the first phase, allowing for a maximum vehicular speed of 100 kilometers per hour. In the second phase, the road will be expanded into six lanes.

The road will create a strong communication route between economic zones in the central area and facilitate the development of new urban townships, industrial parks and tourism facilities.

Deputy PM Hai also asked the Ministry of Transport to join forces with two ministries of planning-investment and finance to devise solutions for ensuring the viability of the project as well as meeting requirements of the international lenders.

Besides the Danang-Quang Ngai, the transport ministry is also seeking the World Bank loans for the Ninh Binh-Thanh Hoa expressway.

Vietnam is pursuing an ambitious plan to develop an expressway across the country with 16 sections stretching a total length of over 1,800km, or some 74km shorter than National Highway 1A as the country’s current backbone.

The country will need a hefty budget of VND312.8 trillion (US$18.4 billion) for the north-south expressway project.

Cau Gie-Ninh Binh in the north is now the first expressway allowing vehicles to travel at over 100 kilometers per hour, while the HCMC-Trung Luong expressway is to be opened to traffic on February 3.