Vietnam government wishes to fully own ACV once again

In its proposal sent to the government, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) has expressed its desire to make ACV a wholly state-owned entity again and asked the government to transfer all public aviation infrastructure assets to ACV until 2025.

Should the scheme be approved, it would give the national airports operator the power to allocate its earnings to the renovation and maintenance of aviation infrastructure across the nation.

According to the Law on Management and use of public property that took effective on January 1, 2018, all proceeds arrive from the exploitation of aviation infrastructure asset shall be remitted to the state’s coffers. Yet as ACV is no longer a 100 per-cent state-owned enterprise, it cannot be assigned to carry out projects on aviation infrastructure.

Following its equitisation in 2016, 95.4 per cent of ACV is owned by the government, while 3.61 per cent belongs to foreign shareholders and the remaining part to local investors. ACV’s airport infrastructure assets were also transferred to the government, which now responsible to allocate funds for airport upgrading and maintenance purposes.

Given the status of a wholly state-owned enterprise, ACV will be able to both manage and exploit the aviation infrastructure assets and invest, upgrade, and expand aviation projects.

Major airports like Tan Son Nhat International Airport and Noi Bai International Airport have been suffering overload with their capacity and infrastructure, thus affecting the overall flight safety regulations. MoT has thus proposed the government to set aside some VND4.2 trillion ($182.6 million) from the mid-term public investment funds to upgrade these airports.

ACV has been keen on making investments in the construction of Tan Son Nhat International Airport’s Terminal 3 and the Long Thanh International Airport, as well as in the expansion of Dien Bien Phu Airport.