Foreign currency deposits at commercial banks in HCM City increased by 8.3 per cent in July from earlier this year, while outstanding loans fell by 1.6 per cent, said Nguyen Hoang Minh deputy director of the city branch of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV).
As of late July, local banks had mobilized about US$7.9 billion in foreign currencies, mostly in U.S. Dollars, Minh reported.
Minh added that the incremental savings was due to inverse movements of borrowing and lending. Institutional depositors account for 40 per cent to 45 per cent of the total amount.
As foreign currencies are increasingly deposited at banks rather than being sold to credit institutions, the supply of dollars on the market has dwindled, according to the SBV.
Commercial banks currently lack enough greenbacks to sell to importers, but in excess of foreign capital for lending, they cannot use savings in dollars to sell to enterprises.
The SBV, however, has not yet had any effective measures to force exporters holding dollars in their accounts to sell to lenders.
Meanwhile, commercial banks continue quoting buying and selling prices of the U.S. dollar at the same level and also at the highest level permitted by the State Bank of Vietnam.
The SBV is examining the U.S. dollar trading at banks as well as cooperating with other authorities to find out and punish individuals or institutions who trade U.S. dollars illegally or post goods or services prices in foreign currencies.
Minh said those measures are aimed to deter others, as the authorities, in fact, could not examine all the city’s 3,500 gold shops which usually engage in forex trading. (Investment, Saigon Economic Times)
Vietnamese
