Le Huy Hoang, deputy director of the Hanoi Urban Railway Management Unit which is the project's investor recently admitted with the Tien Phong Newspaper that almost all the packages of this project were behind the deadline of 2018 to begin operations.

According to Hoang, Package 3 which involves the construction of four underground stations is the most challenging due to problems in site clearance work.

"This package should have been started nearly a year ago but until now we still can’t break ground. And it is estimated to needs 49 months to complete which means that we can’t finish it before 2019," Hoang said, adding that the contractor is asking for 400 million euros in compensation due to slow site clearance.

Nine other remaining packages are all seeing sluggish progress.

Package 4 which includes the main depot, carried out by the Hanoi General Construction Corporation, was scheduled to be finished by mid-2012 but only the foundations have been completed.

Korean contractor Posco E&C is also behind schedule on Package 2. This includes fences on the road as part of the project which should have been finished by the end of 2014, but since the construction pace has been slow, the project has seriously affected traffic, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, Hoang added that Package 1 which started in July 2014 to build the overhead rail line from Nhon to Kim Ma Street, was planned to complete by January 2017 but only half of work has been completed. The Korean contractor Daelim has proposed to extend the time for this project.

The investor's representative said that although the project has been delayed many times, no individual has been held responsibility or fined because it involved lots of organisations and agencies.

Hanoi's first urban railway from Nhon to Hanoi Railway Station received 783 million euros funded by the French government. The 12.5-km route was to have 12 stations with automatic ticketing systems, four kilometres would run underground. Each train would have a planned capacity of 900 passengers.

The project was kicked off in September 2010 and scheduled to be completed by 2016. However, the completion date has continued to be adjusted to 2017, 2018 and now 2019, while investment was also raised to USD1.57 billion in 2015, while costs continue to spiral.