Ho Chi Minh City listed 16 infrastructure projects on Wednesday at about 249 trillion dong, or $9.5 billion. The largest is the Thu Thiem to Long Thanh metro, about 134 trillion dong, from downtown to Long Thanh International Airport. The same package widens National Highway 1 to 60 meters and 10 to 12 lanes, expands National Highway 13, and starts two stretches of Ring Road 4 (VietnamPlus, 2026).

Nikkei Asia put the nationwide work that began on National Day, the holiday that marks Ho Chi Minh's 1945 independence speech, in the tens of billions of dollars and named railways and airports as the spend (Hoang, 2026).

Hanoi used the same holiday week to inaugurate or break ground on 17 flagship works that the government portal put at about $15.27 billion. Two of the new starts are national railway jobs: an eastern ring section from Ngoc Hoi to Kim Son, and a realignment of the Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City line between Phu Xuyen and Ngoc Hoi (Vietnam Government Portal, 2026).

I have been asking, when a factory leaves China for Vietnam, whether the port and the airport expand with it.

Long Thanh Targets Commercial Flights on December 1

Long Thanh, 40 kilometers east of Ho Chi Minh City, is scheduled to take commercial flights on December 1. The National Assembly approved about $13 billion for a three-phase airport meant to replace Tan Son Nhat as the south's international hub. Trial operations run through the fall with the operator of Incheon. Nearly all international flights out of Tan Son Nhat are slated to move by spring 2028 (VnExpress, 2026).

The metro that would put downtown on that runway is in Wednesday's start list. Dai Quang Minh, a unit of automaker Thaco, is the investor on a build-transfer contract. Published plans put service around 2030. Roads will carry the first years of passengers and air cargo (VnExpress, 2026; VietnamPlus, 2026).

You can fly parts in. People and inbound boxes still ride 40 kilometers of expressway while the rail is poured.

U.S. Imports From Vietnam Tripled After Plants Left China

U.S. imports from China fell after the 2018 and 2019 tariffs. Imports from Vietnam tripled by 2025. A Federal Reserve note in July said a large share of that export boom to the United States ran through Chinese-owned firms that relocated production, and that non-Chinese firms that had been in China moved too (Federal Reserve, 2026).

China still feeds those plants. Official figures cited by The Straits Times put Chinese goods into Vietnam at $198.11 billion in 2025, more than double 2019. Two-way trade through the Friendship Pass in the first half of 2026 was 305.6 billion yuan, up 28.3 percent (The Straits Times, 2026).

A Bac Ninh or Binh Duong plant that ships to the United States or Europe depends on the channel, the crane, and the last road to the gate. That is why Wednesday's list is heavy on highways, ring roads, and airport rail.

Decree 217 Requires Building Models on New Grade II Works

From July 1, Decree 217/2026 requires building information modeling on new Grade II and higher works, and a common data environment on Grade I public-investment jobs. Open formats such as Industry Foundation Classes are the preferred handover. The 2025 Construction Law, in force the same day, also creates a national construction database (CIC, 2026; Tilleke and Gibbins, 2025).

Prime Minister Decision 2597, signed 27 November 2025, covers operations after the pour. By 2030 the plan is that every new infrastructure investment uses geographic information systems, building information modeling, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence in design, supervision, quality control, and operation. The same decision tells ministries to write standards for digital twins of infrastructure and to connect those twins to operations centers on the maps (Decision 2597/QD-TTg, 2025; Construction Magazine, 2026).

Paper drawings are expensive to keep. A surveyed site, a three-dimensional model on a map, and a handover file the operator can query are how a team finds a clash before the pile is driven, and how it finds a broken asset after the contractor has left.

Vietnamese port consultant Portcoast has published that workflow on the Cai Mep-Thi Vai complex and on Ho Chi Minh City Metro Line 1. Drones, laser scans, and seabed surveys go onto a geographic information system. Design models sit on the same map. Investors who are not engineers can see channel depth, a warehouse layout, and what has to be moved before a berth is poured. After opening, the same file is meant to become the asset register (Esri ArcNews, 2024; Portcoast, 2025; Autodesk, 2025).

I wrote this week about oilfield and industrial firms selling cooling and halls into data centers. A contract manufacturer has the same physical limit. The plant does not ship if the dock, the airport road, or the buried utility file is late.

Officials Put the Ten-Year Need at $1.5 Trillion

In July, Nikkei Asia reported that officials put the infrastructure need at about $1.5 trillion over ten years, and that Hanoi wants a finance center in 2027 in part because domestic banks cannot cover it (Nguyen and Nitta, 2026). Expressway length reached 3,188 kilometers by the end of 2025. The road administration's next mark is 5,000 kilometers by 2030 (Dong Nai Newspaper, 2026).

Build-transfer contracts, pulled back after graft risk, are in use again for urban and transport jobs. Several of Wednesday's projects use that structure. Track the delivery date and the digital handover that travels with it.

About Shashi Bellamkonda

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