SMEs Find Hard to Access Subsidized Loans
Most of small and medium-sized (SMEs) in Vietnam complained that they were in into trouble to get subsidized loans despite the government’s new stimulus package announced.
This was given at a dialogue between SMEs and banks held by the Ho Chi Minh City Investment and Trade Promotion Center on April 9.
SMEs said the difficulty of loan assess is mainly due to lack of mortgage assets.
A director of a VND10-billion cashew processing plant in southern Binh Duong province said that he was rejected by a commercial bank as he did not have mortgage assets equivalent to the loan
SMEs also encountered problems in borrowing loans at Vietnam Development Bank (VDB) which VDB asks them to fulfill tax payments and mortgage their assets.
VDB spends some 20 days to evaluate a business project and more time to consider the guarantee while the cashew harvest is only between March and May, he said.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Industry and Trade Department, as of April 9, it received registration documents for subsidized credits worth VND7.75 trillion from 130 local SMEs.
However, only 19 among those are provided with the loans as the remaining ones fail to meet borrowing requirements.
To deal with the situation, the Ministry of Planning and Investment has submitted a number of incentives for SMEs to the government, including the establishment of a fund to help SMEs improve their competitiveness.
By 2008, Vietnam had about 350,000 enterprises, 94 per cent of them SMEs. The sector employs more than half of the country’s workforce and contributes 30 per cent of the GDP. (STD, Saigon Liberation)
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