Vietnam's Ministry of Transportation (MoT) has announced an investment plan for the development of the Long Thanh Airport though a public - private partnership (PPP) project.

The Minister and Chairman of the Government Office, Nguyen Van Nen, has announced the approval of the project. The Ministry of Transport reportedly is calling for domestic and foreign private companies to invest in the project under a PPP programme.

The new facilities aims to alleviate traffic congestion at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat Airport. The Long Thanh Airport is designed to have capacity for 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo.

The total project investment is estimated at US$7.5 billion. MoT outlined that state funding and official development assistance (ODA) grants will cover approximately 48.7% of the total investment to US$3.8 billion, while a joint-stock initiative and the PPP programme will cover approximately 51.3% to US$3.7 billion.

Vietnam has proposed seeking ODA from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Japan, the US, France and South Korea.

Several investors have shown interest in the PPP airport project  including Aéroports de Paris, Samsung, South Korea's Incheon Airport and a group of Japanese corporations.

Construction is scheduled to commence in 2015 and the airport may be operational by 2024.

The proposed airport is located 40 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat Airport. With around 20 million passengers each year, Tan Son Nhat is currently Vietnam's largest airport and is expected to exceed its capacity of 25 million passengers some time after 2017.