1:52:57 PM | 5/11/2008
A number of big state-owned banks including Agribank, BIDV, Vietcombank...have joined efforts with the State Bank of Vietnam's benchmark rates cuts to slash lending rates for customers, Pioneer newspaper said on November 4.
Agribank, the country's biggest bank by assets, axed lending rates of dong loans to 15 per cent-16 per cent per annum, for rural households to 15.5 per cent per annum and small and medium enterprises to 15.9 per cent, the paper said.
BIDV also cut borrowing costs to 15 per cent-16 per cent for exporters and producers of essential goods.
Meanwhile, Vietcombank cut between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of lending rates.
PhD Nguyen Quang Hung told the Pioneer newspaper that the move by SBV this time is very much appreciated because many small and medium companies are short of cash and the country's economy shows signs of deflation.
Meanwhile, Associate Prof-PhD Tran Hoang Ngan of the Ho Chi Minh Economics University said the rates cuts by SBV are seen as “a strong stimulus” to commercial banks to cut lending rates and turn “green light” to local banks to loan more to realty developers with 80 per cent of them facing cash lack.
CEOs of local commercial banks said that SBV prime rates cuts are of great significance and supportive of SMEs.
The National Committee for Finance Supervision and the Ho Chi Minh City Realty Association said the rates cuts are miracles to save the realty market. A CEO of a HCMC-based firm admitted that up to 95 per cent of the realty developers rely on bank loans.
"If we have access to VND30 billion in the next three months, we can continue our existing projects and create 400 jobs, and we will avoid foreclosures to settle debts, and we expect to settle debts mid-2009," he said. (Pioneer)
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