The exhibition center is 800 billion dong late for the seventh year

Construction project on the Saigon River in Thu Thiem New Urban Area, Thu Duc City. At the end of May, the construction site was quiet when only a few workers worked, inside there were concrete blocks, iron and steel, scaffolding… Many items showed signs of deterioration after a long period of stagnation. Currently, the roads around the project are not open to vehicles, so it looks like a bare concrete block along the river from afar.

The project of Ho Chi Minh City Planning Exhibition Center started in 2013. The project is 18,000 m2 wide, located between the road along the Saigon River and Vong Cung Boulevard. The building has a scale of 5 floors, serving the display and exhibition of the city’s architectural planning; organize events, a place for the exchange of professionals, residents, visitors… With the architecture of two inclined blocks, clustered together, the steel block forming a triangle, the exhibition center is considered a public work. iconic community in Thu Thiem New Urban Area.

The original plan, the work was completed in 2015, then delayed to 2016 but still did not achieve this goal. In mid-2018, the exhibition center construction management board (the investor) asked to delay the progress and was approved to adjust the completion time to the end of 2019. However, the work is still unfinished when reaching about approx. 4/5 volume.

Explaining the cause of the project’s many years of delay, Mr. Huynh Xuan Thu, deputy chief of the office of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Architecture, said the implementation process was difficult because the investor and contractor did not agree on materials. Construction cover (aluminum glass). This problem makes many other packages in the project not deployable, even though the equipment has been imported.

In 2021, the People’s Council of Ho Chi Minh City agreed to allocate a capital of 400 billion VND for the project, but the above problems have not been resolved, so the investor proposed to sue. According to Mr. Thu, the lawsuit was “very troublesome”, consuming time and money, so the city continued to ask the contractor to submit the correct materials as the original to ensure the quality of the work.

“In principle, construction materials must be according to the contract, but the contractor submitted the material not as committed,” Mr. Thu said. Currently, the project has restarted. The City People’s Committee requested the completion of the bidding package to build the cover to deploy the next parts.

According to a representative of the Department of Planning and Architecture, the project has been transferred to a new investor, the Construction Investment Project Management Board of civil and industrial works. This is a management agency with a lot of experience, strong human resources, and hopes to speed up the resolution of the project’s problems. After receiving it from the old investor, the above agency will supervise the investment, propose the time and progress of completion… The project is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2023.

In addition to focusing on solving problems for the project, Ho Chi Minh City is preparing a bidding package to design exhibition content inside the project. When the project is put into operation, it is not only a place to announce the planning, but also a place to introduce potential projects of the city to attract investors.

Thu Hang – Gia Minh