The 26-hectare piece of land in Binh Chanh District remains unused for years and is covered in weeds.

Its entrance doors are gone, and the guardhouse is deserted. The surrounding walls are faded, and sections of a barbed wire fence put around it have been destroyed by locals to create entrances into the plot.

A household within the depot area has yet to be relocated.

The depot will also house the control center, assembly and maintenance and repair facilities for the Ben Thanh – Tan Kien metro line.

Thirteen years ago the city leveled the site and built the fence and guardhouses at a cost of over VND26 billion (US$1 million).

A part of the land plot in HCMC’s Binh Chanh District that is designated as Tan Kien Depot of HCMC’s metro line No.3A, June 7, 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Gia Minh

The land acquisition and compensation payment to 152 affected households were done separately by local authorities.

Line No.3A will connect with line No.1, the Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien route, that is scheduled to partially start operations next month.

It will run 20 km from Ben Thanh in District 1 and Tan Kien Ward in Binh Chanh District, cost an estimated US$2.8 billion and be built in two phases.

Work on phase 1 is expected to start in 2025 and be completed in 2031.

In 2019 the fence was built around the depot but two families refuse to move out, and one is still holding out.

This project has undergone six extensions to its completion deadline.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Urban Railway Management Board (MAUR), which manages all metro projects in the city, the items built so far are not protected since they have not yet been officially assessed and handed over by their contractor, resulting in their severe deterioration.

MAUR said the ground, which was leveled, has “naturally” subsided and no longer meets the standards for further construction.

Some locals have even dug ponds for fish farming and planted lotuses in it.

Some sections of the fence and gates have been stolen or dismantled to create pathways, and the remaining portions are damaged and rusted.

One of the households that was moved out has moved back illegally, and others have encroached upon the land for farming and raising livestock.

In 2022 the Urban Railway Company No. 1 (HURC1), the city’s metro operator, proposed to take over the land temporarily to manage it.

It suggested it would come up with plans to use the land for temporary storage, parking and other commercial purposes while waiting for the construction.

But this proposal was not approved.

The depot’s entrance has lost its door and can be freely entered and exited in this photo taken on June 7, 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Gia Minh

In May this year MAUR petitioned the city to instruct Binh Chanh District authorities to swiftly finish the site clearance and hand over the land before the third quarter.

MAUR also called for approving HURC1’s plan to temporary exploit the site for commercial purposes.

3A is one of eight metro lines planned to be built in the city.

They will have 10 depots on a total area of 222 hectares.

Long Binh Depot in Thu Duc City for line No.1 is nearly complete.

Metro Line No. 2 from Ben Thanh Market to District 12 is in the process of land acquisition. Work on it will begin next year and be completed by 2030.

The number of convenience stores in the country from April last year to April this year had risen by 72 percent year-on-year to over 3,100, according to Ho Chi Minh City market research firm Q&Me. That means 1,300 convenience stores came to the market in just one year.

Half of them, 660, came from Vinmart+, a convenience store chain of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate Vingroup. This is a growth of 82 percent. In the same period, supermarket chain Vinmart saw its number of store risen by 82 percent to 120 outlets.

Bach Hoa Xanh, a retail unit of the country’s major phone seller Mobile World (MWG), now has over 500 department stores after incorporated in 2015. It is seeing strong growth with VND4.3 trillion ($184 million) in revenue last year, three times that of 2017.

The market has recently seen strong merger and acquisition activities, with Vingroup’s retail arm VinCommerce buying out convenience store chain Shop&Golast month and supermarket chain Fivimart last October.

Vietnam’s retail market has become increasingly crowded with both local and international players over the last five years. Although experts have said that the market has a lot of growth potential, many foreign businesses have quit or scaling back expansion plans.

French supermarket group Auchan Retail might be the newest player to withdraw from the market.

Auchan’s 15 out of 18 supermarkets will stop operating on June 3. Its CEO Edgar Bonte said that their business in Vietnam generated revenues of 45 million euros ($50.4 million) last year, but was making losses. He did not provide figures of the losses.

Bonte told French newspaper Les Echos last week the company had decided to sell its stores in Vietnam.

A source from the company, who wished not to be named, said the firm is negotiating with a few retailers to sell the outlets and the negotiations “are expected to end before Auchan withdraws from Vietnam early next month.”

Germany-headquartered Metro was sold to a Thai investor in 2014 and disappeared from the market ever since, while Malaysia’s Parkson has been closing down its mallssince 2015.

Other convenience store chain has failed or will unlikely meet its initial expansion target. Japanese Ministop had only 115 stores as of April, even though it had planned to have 800 by last year.

Japanese convenience store chain FamilyMart saw its store number dropped by nine to 151 from last April to this April, while its initial plan was to have 1,000 stores by next year.

Vietnam’s revenue from selling goods last year rose by 11.7 percent from 2017 to $142 billion, up 12.4 percent from 2017.