Ba Ria-Vung Tau (VNA) – The southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau plans to expand its Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre to 2,204 hectares, turning itself into a logistics hub of the region, according to an action plan on enhancing the locality’s logistics competitiveness and development until 2025.
The action plan, approved by the provincial People’s Committee recently to replace the 2017 version, aims to meet the current logistics service development requirements.
Objectives of the scheme include developing logistics services into a sector with high added value, associating logistics services with the expansion of goods production, import-export activities in the locality and the whole country, and promoting the development of transport and information technology infrastructure.
In 2025, the province expects to become a focal point of logistics service in the southeast region with a healthy growth of the logistics service market, attracting domestic and foreign investment, contributing to turning Ba Ria-Vung Tau into a port urban area in the future.
Specifically, in 2025, the province aims for about 4.4% of contributions from the logistics sector to the province’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP), with a growth rate of 8% and total volume of goods handled by the local port system reaching 100 million tonnes per year.
The province will focus on calling for investment to promoting the development of the logistics infrastructure in Phu My township and Vung Tau city, thus enhancing the efficiency of connections among the localities in the northern key economic region, the Mekong Delta region as well as between them and countries in the development triangle.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau will encourage the establishment of logistics service businesses, as well as the application of new technologies and the training of professional human resources in logistics.
Under a planning on Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre that was approved in September 2020, the centre covers 1,763 hectares, including a logistic centre and Cai Mep Ha downstream port with an area of more than 984 hectares. Its surface area is over 455 hectares. The land for clean energy storage is more than 197 hectares and the potential water surface area, more than 125 hectares.
This is a functional area belonging to the new Phu My urban area planning, serving as a goods transshipment centre at regional and global scales, receiving and transshipping goods to/from domestic localities and countries around the world through sea, inland waterway and road.
At the same time, it is also a centre for receiving, storing, and processing raw materials, and packing, labeling and distributing goods, serving neighbouring industrial zones as well as the Cai Mep - Thi Vai port cluster, Vung Tau port and the whole seaports in Group 5, which includes seaports in the southeast region.
It also provides other supporting services for customs, coast control, quarantine, banking, and logistics training activities, among others.
However, in order to expand the Cai Mep Ha port into being able to receive vessels with a capacity of 250,000 tonnes or 24,000 TEU, the 2020 planning has been adjusted,
After the adjustments, the centre’s total area will be 2,204 hectares. The area of the Cai Mep Ha downstream port will increase to 1,485 hectares, and the water surface area 202 hectares.
Land for storage of clean energy will be switched into that for logistics and ports. The remaining area will become the potential water surface area.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau has a system of deep-water seaports spanning nearly 20km, which is classified as a national special one and serves as a gateway to the East Sea of the southern region. The local Cai Mep-Thi Vai is now the only port cluster in Vietnam that accommodates ships carrying containers directly to Europe and America, without transhipment through a third country.
The province has identified tourism development as one of its important economic pillars toward becoming a high-quality, world-class tourism hub. Currently, the local tourism activities mainly take place in the Vung Tau - Long Hai - Phuoc Hai - Binh Chau national tourist areas, as well as on Con Dao island./.