HCMC – The northern upland province of Lao Cai today, March 3, broke ground on an airport in Sapa with a total cost of nearly VND7 trillion. When in service, it would be the largest airport in northwestern Vietnam.
The project had earlier been approved for development under the public-private partnership format by the prime minister, the local media reported.
The Sapa airport will cover an area of 371 hectares in Cam Con Commune in Bao Yen District, with the first phase covering 295.2 hectares and the second phase over 75 hectares.
In the first phase, the airport will meet the 4C standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization and can handle 1.5 million passengers a year.
Meanwhile, in the second phase, after 2028, the airport’s capacity will be doubled to three million passengers per year.
The project is expected to pave the way for Lao Cai and neighboring provinces to fuel growth.
Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Sapa airport, Nguyen Trong Hai, vice chairman of the Lao Cai government, said that the Sapa airport had been long planned.
The airport will be a breakthrough for the province’s traffic development, boosting socio-economic growth in Lao Cai and the northeastern region as a whole and stimulating tourism and service growth in the province.
On the same day, Lao Cai Province also broke ground on a border bridge across the Red River in Ban Vuoc Commune and an electric wire and cable production plant in Ban Qua Commune in Bat Xat District, and put into service an intersection linking Provincial Road 152 and the Noi Bai-Lao Cai expressway.
