State Bank Focuses on Boosting Credit Growth by Years-end

State Bank Focuses on Boosting Credit Growth by Years-end

The central bank has identified mobilizing idle money for lending and raising credit quality as the key tasks for banks and credit institutions across Vietnam during the remainder of the year.

Speaking at a conference in Hanoi on June 17, its governor Le Duc Thuy also said the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) would roll out appropriate measures to maintain credit growth at 25 per cent for the whole year.

However, with only 10 per cent growth estimated in the first six months, demand for credit would boom during the rest of the year. Therefore, the SBV had to adopt measures to bridle broad money supply in the economy while at the same time ensuring projects and enterprises had access to credit, he said.

He reported since early April this year, the interest rates applied for loans in both the US dollar and the Vietnam dong had risen by 0.12-1.8 per cent per year, mainly due to soaring capital demand.

Flexible monetary policies should also accompany measures to keep down inflation to ensure GDP grow at 8 per cent this year, he said.

Thuy stressed that SBV would curb the increase of the exchange rate between the local currency and the US at the maximum of 0.55 per cent against last December.

The governor said if proper measures and monetary policies were adopted, the consumer price index increase would be capped at 6.5 per cent, as hoped by the National Assembly.

In the first five months, the consumer price index hovered at 4.8 per cent, with a 0.2 per cent rise estimated for June. Limiting its rise to 1.7 per cent in the remaining months of the year can be achieved, the banking official noted.

• VNA