Hanoi’s municipal transport department has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the China Pacific Construction Group (CPCG) and the Vietnam Construction Import–Export Corporation on Thursday.

According to Vietnamese website The Investor, the agreement was signed after Yan Jiehe, CPCG’s founder and chairman, met with Pham Minh Chinh, Vietnam’s prime minister, in Hanoi in January 2023.

The deal will include construction of the City’s Metro Line 5, a $2.7bn project that will run for almost 39km from the centre of the city to the western suburbs.

This project was approved in 2011, and was to have been built in two phases, beginning in 2016 and finishing in 2030. As that schedule was missed, the line will now be built in a single phase starting before 2026.

The Vietnam Investment Review notes that the Hanoi People’s Committee will raise the money for the project.

It said about $630m would come from public sources and about $465m from equity and capital divestment ventures. A further $630m would be raised by auctioning land areas, $420m from bonds, and $290m from loans.

When complete, the line will run for 6.5km underground, 2km elevated, and 30km on the ground. It will have 21 stations and two depots.

The Hanoi metro presently has only one line in operation. That scheme, built by China Railway Sixth Group, a subsidiary of China Railway Group, suffered multiple delays and cost overruns (see further reading).

Eventually, the capital is to have 10 lines with a total length of nearly 420km, including 75km underground.

China Pacific Construction Group is a private contractor specialising in transport projects, based in Urumqi, Xinjiang. It is one of the 100 largest companies in the world, with almost 400,000 employees and revenue of around $85bn.