Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, former Director of the Central Institute of Economic Management:
Building an airport is like a highlight of the ecosystem. Therefore, the legitimate need to build airports of localities should be supported and be realized through incentive tools and institutions that can be used by localities, and investors can feel the attraction of investment opportunities, are facilitated to participate, give enough room for the localities to be flexible, take advantage of the mechanism for economic development.
Inappropriate planning will become a bottleneck for socio-economic development. Therefore, there should be an open plan. Accordingly, do not locate 28 airports by 2030 or 31 airports by 2050, we should have “hardware” and “software” not to waste time adjusting and creating a “asking and giving” mechanism. It should not set the construction sequence according to the year, should be flexible so that the localities can decide for themselves under their needs. It is necessary to decentralize 2/3 of the airports for the local implementation.
Mr. Hong Sun, Vice President of Korean Business Association in Vietnam:
Airports are very important for socio-economic development in localities. Airport development should be carefully considered factors such as market demand, distance among localities, population, financial capacity, operating costs…
Vietnam plans to increase the number of airports to 28 by 2030 and 31 by 2050. To achieve this goal, attracting private investment by means of a public-private partnership (PPP) is one effective solution for Vietnam in order to reduce pressure on the state budget, increase efficiency and feasibility.
The choice of a domestic or international airport development model is also an important factor when we consider long-term development. Lessons from other countries have also demonstrated the importance of this. In Korea, many localities have airports and this greatly supports local development.
Small airport development will be really necessary and useful if small airports can support larger airports. In many countries, airports are developed as small cities, meeting the needs of passengers, thereby helping to increase purchasing power and promote tourism development.
In addition, airport development should also pay attention to the development of connection infrastructure such as roads, helping to connect the airport with other infrastructure.
Mr. Kenneth Atkinson, Chairman of British Business Association in Vietnam:
To develop the airport, connectivity infrastructure plays a very important role, including road, rail and sea connections. In the past 20 years, we have witnessed many good examples of socio-economic development, transportation connections to provinces and cities have been significantly improved.
The importance of the airport really depends on the development strategy of the province or city. For example, Ha Giang province in the northern mountainous region wants to develop tourism in order to take advantage of the natural beauty. Ha Giang is about 300 km from Hanoi and it takes several hours to travel by road, making it difficult to attract international tourists. Therefore, airport development is necessary to make it more convenient for tourists. The increase in tourists will lead to the development of hotels and other supporting infrastructure such as shops and restaurants.
The main problem is the investment capital to build the airport. Factors being considered when building an airport are the estimate of initial investment costs, capital due to construction delays, management… Next, it is necessary to have a plan on how to maximize revenue from commercial areas in and around the airport. International consulting firms can help with this.
The model commonly used and has been applied at some airports such as Cam Ranh (Vietnam), Phnom Penh, Siem Riep (Cambodia) is the PPP model.