The company (NBPP) attributed the first-half loss to a combination of falling revenue, rising management costs, and an increase in the proportion of cost-of-sales to revenue.

Revenue in the first 6 months reached VND907 billion ($39.17 million), down 9 percent year-on-year. In the same period, income from financial activities fell, while operating costs rose, the NBPP said.

However, as a non-profit public utility company, it was not given profit targets by either the Ministry of Finance or the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), it added in a statement.

The company had consistently reported profits since it began publicizing financial results in 2013, making between VND21-51 billion ($0.9-2.2 million) each year. However, it reported a VND10 billion ($432,000) loss in the second half of 2018, a similar result to the first half of 2019.

The NBPP is a one-member limited company owned by the state. It prints and mints money, produces gold bars and gold articles, and prints other paper debt instruments as per directions from the central bank governor.

By the end of June this year, the NBPP had total assets of nearly VND2.3 trillion ($99.31 million), of which equity was more than VND1.9 trillion ($82.04 million).