With only a month left of the year, Chinese provincial officials are running out of time to meet their annual growth targets, even as Beijing advances trillions of yuan from next year’s budget to stimulate local economies. Fully 19 of China’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities are behind in meeting their annual GDP targets set earlier this year, based on their economic data from the first three quarters of the year, published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The effects of the central government campaign to cut excessive debt, combined with the trade war with the United States, have sapped growth in many provinces this year.

The growth shortfall in so many provinces this late in the year also raises the question of whether Beijing can meet its national 2018 growth target of around 6.5%. Chinese growth was 6.7% through the first three quarters of the year, leaving some leeway to meet the target even if growth slows further in the fourth quarter. Even though Beijing has stressed the quality of growth rather than its pace, failure to meet the growth targets could hurt local officials’ chances of promotion within the Communist Party hierarchy, giving them an extra incentive to act. The rapid weakening of Chinese growth in the second half, and expectations that the slowdown will accelerate next year, added to pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping to offer concessions to reach a trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump at their dinner in Buenos Aires on December 1.

With the clock ticking towards the year end, some provincial officials are pulling out all the stops in the final few weeks to boost growth and secure their jobs. Xian Hui, Governor of Ningxia, called on his subordinates to prepare for a 40-day race to meet the growth target by improving the efficiency of key projects. Ningxia’s economy grew 7% in the first three quarters, slightly less than its annual goal of 7.5%. Tang Renjian, Governor of Gansu province, ordered local party officials to boost factory production and start new government-sponsored projects as soon as possible. Gansu’s 6.3% growth in the first nine months was above its annual target of about 6%, but its industrial output fell by 1.6% year-on-year in October, stoking worries within the government that fourth-quarter growth would disappoint and pull the full-year results below the target, the South China Morning Post reports.

China’s industrial companies posted slower but steady profit growth in the first 10 months of the year, led by gains in the oil drilling industry and the iron and steel sector. The combined profit of industrial companies with an annual revenue of more than CNY20 million each went up 13.6% year-on-year in the January-October period to CNY5.52 trillion. State-owned companies made a combined profit of CNY1.67 trillion in the first 10 months, up 20.6% from the same period of last year.

Bank of China (BOC) forecast that gross domestic product (GDP) in China will grow by 6.5% in 2019, 0.1 percentage point lower than the estimated full-year GDP growth this year.