Two Japanese engineers are seen inside a metro train installed on a track at the Long Binh Depot in HCMC's District 9, October, 2020 (Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran)

The 19.7-km line between Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to the Suoi Tien theme park in District 9 will get 17 trains in all, but it is not clear when the rest will be delivered from Japan.

The first train arrived last October along with Japanese engineers after a six-month delay due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Once the next four arrive, the HCMC Management Authority for Urban Railways (MAUR) plans to start trial runs, likely in the fourth quarter of this year.

Each train with three cars is 61.5 meters long, and can carry 930 passengers at speeds of 110 kph on the elevated section and 80 kph in the underground section.

"The target is for the entire metro line to be completed by the end of this year," Huynh Hong Thanh, deputy head of MAUR, said at a meeting on Tuesday with a delegation led by city chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong, which was inspecting an underground station in District 1.

But he said the pandemic has affected construction progress.

In February MAUR had said the completion would be pushed back to 2022 from late 2021.

The line is expected to cost VND43.7 trillion (1.89 billion USD).

The much-delayed work, which began in August 2012, is around 83 percent complete by now.

HCMC plans to build eight lines running a total of 220 km.