Vietnam's southern coastal province of Kien Giang plans to build a tourist port in its Phu Quoc Island District under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.

Local officials said the province could not rely on government annual budget allocations and the investment in the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) method would not be effective because of the small amount of revenue to be collected from passenger boats.

The port would be designed to accommodate vessels of up to 6,000 passengers. The pier of the seaport would be 400 meters long and 19 meters wide. A 1,020-meter-long bridge would be built to connect the pier with the shore. It is expected that the port would be able to accommodate the largest cruisers in the world.

According to the Viet Nam Economic Times, the province's leaders and representatives from Ministry of Transport decided in a recent meeting the final location for the US$56.4 million port.

The project details will be submitted to the Ministry of Transport on October 20 and later to the Government for approval.

Phu Quoc Island is located near the Singapore - Thailand - Viet Nam - Northeast Asia tourism route.

It is expected that the number of tourists to Phu Quoc by sea will increase from 105,000 to 190,000 until 2020, and to 550,000 by 2030.