Vietnam Firms Get Harder Access to Dollar Loans
Enterprises in Vietnam will find it more difficult to take out bank loans in the U.S. dollar for the rest of this year, given local banks’ slower mobilization and the country’s trade deficit reduction efforts.
Dinh The Hien, a member of the advisory board of Eximbank, said local firms had benefited much from getting dollar loans in the first half when lending rates in dong were much higher than those for the dollar.
This advantage will no longer exist as banks will have to cut lending rates for dong at the request of the government, thus either reducing or abolishing the difference between dollar and dong interest rates, Hien added.
Tran Hoang Ngan, a member of the National Financial and Monetary Policies Advisory Council, said the State Bank of Vietnam had asked lender banks to limit dollar loans to help curb the trade deficit so it would be hard for enterprises to access dollar funds.
Since last week, some major lenders such as ACB and Eximbank have raised interest rates for U.S. dollar deposits to a maximum of 4.5% a year while some other joint-stock banks have increased the rates around 5.5%.
Figures of the National Financial Supervisory Committee showed that outstanding loans in U.S. dollar at local banks have exceeded their dollar deposits by VND40 trillion, equivalent to $2.05 billion.
The possibility of banks increasing outstanding loans in the dollar in the rest of the year is thus small, Ngan noted. (Saigon Economic Times)
Vietnamese
