As of Saturday morning, about 500 containers, mostly dragon fruit were still waiting for their turn, forming a nearly 5-kilometer (3-mile) queue at the Tan Thanh border gate.

Nguyen Huu Vuong, deputy head of Lang Son Customs said the Tan Thanh border gate specializes in exporting Vietnam’s agricultural products.

It has therefore become the destination for large amounts of dragon fruit containers over the past week as the fruit enters harvesting season. Up to 200 trucks have been arriving each day.

China, meanwhile, has just started applying a tighter inspection policy for vehicles and imported goods, extending the time it takes for each truck to pass through the border gate by 5-7 minutes, resulting in congestion.

“The Chinese Customs has cooperated with Lang Son authorities to create the most favorable conditions for goods clearance. Currently the customs clearance is much improved,” Vuong said. From just 100 trucks a few days ago, they were processing 200-250 now, he added.

He recommended that agricultural product exporters should keep themselves up-to-date with the customs clearance situation at the border gate and avoid sending too much goods as this would extend waiting time, increase costs and reduce produce quality.

Exporters must also correctly declare the types of goods they export, especially for the nine agricultural products that Vietnam has signed with agreement with China, so that their vehicles won’t be detained and result in a lengthy and complex handling process, Vuong said.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien met with Lang Son authorities Saturday and asked them to work with Chinese counterparts to ensure quality as well as timely clearance of goods.

“The province has reported that it’s working very actively with the other side. Therefore, I believe the congestion at Tan Thanh border gate would be resolved soon,” Tien said.

In late August, a similar incident had occurred at Lang Son’s Tan Thanh and Huu Nghi border gates with goods, mainly fruits and other agricultural products, piling up at the border.

This incident was precipitated by the Chinese side granting exporters a new type of certificate of origin, which was not accepted by Vietnamese customs authorities. This conflict forced exporters’ goods to remain at the border gate until the paperwork issue could be resolved.

In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam exported $1.8 billion worth of fruits and vegetables to China, down 10.1 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

China was the biggest importer of Vietnamese fruits and vegetables in the 8-month period, accounting for 73.6 percent, but this was down from 74.9 percent last year.

The second Global Progress Report of the IFC-facilitated Sustainable Banking Network (SBN) says that of the 38 countries, 22, including Vietnam, have adopted national sustainable finance policies and voluntary principles, seven of which were launched in 2019 alone.

The key reforms require banks to assess, manage, and report on environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in their lending operations and put market incentives in place for banks to lend to green projects.

“In 2018, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) approved a green bank development scheme to incentivize credit flows towards green projects and an action plan to realize Vietnam’s sustainable development goals by 2030,” the report said.

To enforce the incorporation of ESG risks into lending decisions, the SBV has set two targets, the first being that all financial institutions must set up Environmental and Social Risk Management Systems (E&S) and incorporate E&S assessment into credit risk assessment by 2025.

It also made it a priority to have at least 10 to 12 banks with specialized units for E&S management and green finance by 2025, the SBN report added.

A survey by the central bank in early 2019 revealed that 76 per cent of participating banks have implemented some sustainable finance strategy.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc Dong said at a press conference Friday that the ministry doesn’t want set a deadline only to miss it again, as has happened several times already.

When the Chinese contractor reports a deadline, the ministry will inform the public, he said.

The French consulting consortium Apave-Certifier-Tricc, which is responsible for evaluating the safety of the project, has finished six out of 14 reports required, Dong said.

Dong also admitted that the ministry made mistakes in designing, acquiring land and constructing the Cat Linh – Ha Dong elevated railway project as pointed out by state auditors in a recent report, resulting in years of delay and ballooning costs.

The deputy minister said further that the project’s losses are expected as its cost is 3-4 times that of a regular road project, but it still needs to be done for economic development.

The ministry is reviewing the roles of officials responsible for the delays as the State Audit Office has suggested and will hand out due punishments, he added.

Work on the Cat Linh-Ha Dong metro line began in 2011 and was originally scheduled for completion in 2013. But several hurdles, including loan disbursement issues with China that were only resolved in December 2017, stalled it for years.

The metro eventually entered the testing phase in March with all 13 cars carrying out trial runs on both lines. The ministry wanted commercial operations to begin at the end of April, but this deadline too was missed.

Project costs have more than doubled from the original VND8.8 trillion ($377 million) to VND18 trillion ($771 million), according to state auditors.

The line now has one percent work remaining, mainly outlook finishing, it has been reported. When complete, the first metro line will run 13 kilometers from Cat Linh Station in downtown Dong Da District to Yen Nghia Station in southwest Ha Dong District.

The 98-kilometer Cam Lo-La Son section, which connects the central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue, will have four lanes with a width of 23 meters. On opening to traffic in 2021, the expressway will allow speed up to 80 kilometers per hour.

At the project’s inauguration ceremony, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc reminded the Ministry of Construction, the project’s management board, and contractors to “fully realize their responsibilities, stick to schedule, ensure work quality, and combat violations and corruption in capital construction investment.”

The Ministry of Transport will continue to complete procedures to start work on the remaining sections of the North-South Expressway, two of which are wholly state-funded and another eight are in the form of public-private partnerships.

Currently, Vietnam has nearly 1,000 km of expressways, and expects to build another 900 km by the end of 2021. Between 2021 and 2025, the government aims to build an additional 2,000 km of expressway, the PM added.

The Cam Lo-La Son section, one of three state-funded sections of the North-South Expressway, is a key project for the Ministry of Transport this year. The other two are the Cao Bo-Mai Son Expressway in the north and My Thuan 2 Bridge in the south. Work is yet to commence on either.

Together, the 11 sections of the North-South Expressway will cost over VND118 trillion ($5.1 billion), of which VND55 trillion ($2.37 billion) will be funded by the state.

The 11 sections will stretch 654 kilometers from Nam Dinh Province near Hanoi to Vinh Long Province to the southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. They are part of the 2,000-kilometer long transnational expressway that is set to be finished by 2025.

The annual refinancing rate, rediscount rate, overnight electronic interbank rate, rate of loans to offset capital shortage in clearance between the central bank and domestic banks, and rates for financial instruments traded under the bank’s open market operations (OMO) will be cut by 0.25 percentage points each from September 16.

This is the first time the central bank has cut interest rates since October 2017.

The decision to cut rates comes as the global economy worsens and many central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB), have also resorted to rate cuts.

Two weeks ago, the central bank had threatened to sanction banks offering high interest rates on deposits fearing a race could destabilize the banking sector, after a number of commercial banks raised their rates by 0.2-0.8 percentage points over the early 2019 average of 8-9 percent.

The 98-kilometer Cam Lo-La Son section, which connects the central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue, will have four lanes with a width of 23 meters when finished in 2021. The expressway will allow speed up to 80 kilometers per hour.

It will run alongside the existing National Route 1A and be linked with another expressway to connect with other central localities, Da Nang City and Quang Ngai Province.

The project is one of three state-funded sections of the North South Expressway, a key project of the Ministry of Transport this year. The other two, whose construction is yet to begin, are Cao Bo-Mai Son Expressway in the north and My Thuan 2 Bridge in the south.

Together with eight other sections that will be invested in the form of public private partnership, the 11 sections of the North-South Expressway will cost over VND118 trillion ($5.1 billion) in total, of which VND55 trillion ($2.37 billion) will be funded by the state.

The sections will stretch 654 kilometers from Nam Dinh Province near Hanoi to Vinh Long Province to the southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.

They are part of the ongoing 2,000-kilometer long transnational expressway, which is set to be finished by 2025.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has sent a circular to the commercial banks noting that investment in corporate bonds is laden with risk, but many banks have large proportions of their asset structure comprised of corporate bonds, and this has been increasing rapidly.

The circular said commercial banks can no longer purchase corporate bonds for the purpose of restructuring debts of issuing enterprises, and must also take post-lending supervision measures to limit bad debts.

A large proportion of the bonds have been also been issued to finance investments in the real estate sector, which the SBV considers risky because of its inherent instability and many difficulties still faced by businesses in the sector.

According to the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX), the value of corporate bonds issued in the first half of this year reached VND89.48 trillion ($3.86 billion), up 34 percent year-on-year. Securities firm MBS Securities reported that 42 of this were issued by banks, and 30 percent by businesses in the real estate sector.

Real estate firms have also been issuing bonds at higher interest rates, averaging around 11-13 percent per annum, sometimes as high as 14.5 percent, compared to average bank bond yields of just 7-8 percent a year, MBS said.

Bond growth was spurred by a new regulation released in December last year that removed or eased many of the conditions for private bond issues, and tightening credit policies on real estate lending have been forcing real estate firms to seek alternative sources of finance, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA).

However, economists have warned that the high interest rates also raise the risk of default, and lower transparency requirements mean investors have to be more careful.

On Friday the US Dollar Index (DXY), a measure of the greenback’s strength against a basket of currencies, crossed the 98-point mark in the last three sessions, its highest level since May 2017 and almost 3 percent up since June-end.

The Chinese yuan fell for the sixth consecutive session to 7.0931 to the dollar, the lowest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, and edging closer to the crucial 7.1 mark.

Global markets plunged when China allowed the yuan to fall below the key 7 threshold in early August, and investors piled into gold, safe-haven Japanese yen and bonds amid heightened worries of a global currency war, Reuters reported.

But the recent volatility in the global market does not seem to have a big impact on Vietnam, Harry Loh, General Director of the Singapore-owned United Overseas Bank Vietnam, said.

Given the State Bank of Vietnam’s (SBV) clear policy orientation to maintain stability and liquidity in the forex market since the beginning of the year, it will likely keep the dong/dollar trading band at around 2 percent for this year, and so overnight shocks in the market would be unlikely, said Harry Loh.

Several securities companies had also forecast in recent reports that the dong/dollar exchange rate was unlikely to change by more than 2-3 percent, a band Vietnam has maintained in recent years even with global pressures.

According to Bao Viet Securities (BVSC), by the end of July the exchange rate had not changed much since the end of last year, and so the SBV has “sufficiently large room” to manipulate the dong.

The pressure from a rising dollar could be kept at bay until this year because Vietnam has abundant foreign currency reserves, it said.

“Year-end mergers and acquisitions such as BIDV selling a 15 percent stake to South Korea’s KEB Hana Bank, plans by Vietcombank to sell a 6.5 percent stake and MBBank selling 7.5 percent to foreign investors is expected to bring a lot of foreign currency into Vietnam,” BVSC said. It expected the value of these M&A deals to reach $2 billion.

According to Viet Dragon Securities, because FDI prospects are “excellent” this year, foreign exchange reserves will increase, meaning the SBV will have “significant room” to make currency interventions.

Foreign investment in Vietnam is expected to top $20 billion this year, a record high, according to Singapore’s United Overseas Bank (UOB).

On Friday the SBV set the daily reference rate for the dollar at VND23,127. This meant the dong had depreciated by 1.98 percent from a year ago and 1.32 percent since the beginning of this year.

The report, released Wednesday by the National Assembly’s Finance Committee, says ODA disbursement in the first five months of the year was just VND2 trillion ($85.9 million), while the annual target is VND28 trillion ($1.2 billion).

According to the report, the delay was caused by a lack of consistent policies among different government bodies and an unclear management mechanism.

The lethargic disbursement has delayed major projects and resulted in ballooning costs, the report said.

Eric Sidgwick, country director for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), had said at a forum in June that Vietnam’s average disbursement rate was much lower than other recipients of ADB funding.

Red tape was one of the main causes for this situation, he said. Even minor changes in projects, like increases in scale, 6-month loan extensions, cost structure changes, or the use of contingency funds had to get investment policy approval, and in the meantime, project activities and payments were suspended, he noted.

Last year, the country only met 53.65 percent of its disbursement target, the Finance Committee report said.