Ho Chi Minh City will need nearly VND17 trillion ($799 million) for transportation infrastructure development in 2014 alone.

The southern economic hub will allocate the money to complete approximately 45 km road with an area of approximately 397,000 m2 of land use.

According to the municipal Department of Transport (MOT), the city budget for 2014 can only cover over VND7 trillion, while VND2.3 trillion will be sourced by official development assistance (ODA) funding.

Mr. Bui Xuan Cuong, deputy director of MOT, said  in 2014, the city will strive to put to use the urgent transport works that have already been properly planned, such as completing 6 new bridges (Lo Canal, Phuoc Loc, Le Van Sy, Kieu, Hau Giang and Bong), dredging the Soai Rap River, expanding Ring Road No.2, and upgrading Highway No.1.

In addition, the city will continue to strive to fulfill the key projects, such as Provincial Road 10B (Tan Binh District), a session of Tan Son Nhat - Binh Loi - outer belt road (Thu Duc district), Pham Van Bach Street (Tan Binh District), many subprojects including  Thanh Da embankments (Binh Thanh District), and Nguyen Thi Thap Street upgrade (District 7). According to Cuong, the biggest difficulty is still the capital mobilization for all the projects, as if not mobilized enough timely, the work at many groundbreaking projects will lag behind the plans.

HCMC People's Committee has issued a written document for the advance of more than VND100 billion from the budget for major projects to partially tackle the difficulty.

In addition, the HCMC People's Committee has also submitted a written proposal to the Ministry of Planning and Investment to seek for nearly $ 1.2 billion lending from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the fiscal year 2015-2017 to find the funding for many key transportation infrastructure projects.

HCMC has also planned to turn Hiep Phuoc Port area in District 9 into national seaport center that can compete regionally.

As reported by the project management unit dredging the Soai Rap River, the dredging work has basically completed so that large vessels weighing up to 30,000-54,000 tons can enter Saigon Premier Container Terminal (SPCT) in Nha Be District from may 2014.

The dredging project will help reduce the distance from the East Vietnam Sea to HCMC by about 30 kilometers.

It is expected in June 2014, the remaining work will be done so that larger vessels weighing up to 60,000 tons can freely travel to SPCT.

Several important traffic routes around the Hiep Phuoc Ports areas have already been finished, and HCMC will focus on construction of metro routes, belt roads and highways to meet cargo transport demand of the port.

HCMC set a target to increase the volume of goods transferred via Hiep Phuoc Port to 200-250 million tons per year by 2020.