The Vietnamese economy is facing three major challenges, namely low
credit growth, slow pace of non-performing loan settlement, and sluggish
business and production, the Government news portal quoted former
Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Cao Viet Sinh as saying.
Although
credit growth rose steadily from 3.15 percent in July to 4.08 percent
in August and 6.62 percent in September this year, capital has not been
effectively pumped into the economy. As a result, it is hard to expect
strong growth.
Meanwhile, banks’ non-performing loans tend to
increase mainly due to low credit growth and slow settlement of bad
debts. For instance, the ratio rose from 3.61 percent at the end of 2013
to 4.07 percent last May and even 4.17 percent in June.
So far
this year, the Vietnam Asset Management Company purchased around 19,600
billion VND of bad debts compared to the preset target of 70-100
trillion VND for 2014 alone.
For business community, the former
Deputy Minister said he really feels worried as the number of dissolved
and suspended enterprises went up 13.8 percent, equivalent to 48,330
enterprises, against the previous year.
The number of newly-established businesses and registered capital volume have not much improved, he added.
To
overcome the above challenges, the Government has tasked inferior
levels to realize a series of solutions to facilitate production and
business while stepping up the implementation of the Master plan to
restructure the economy.
The General Statistics Office has
reported that the economy expanded 5.62 percent in the first nine months
of 2014.The figure, Sinh commented, goes beyond expectations.
Specifically,
the GDP climbed from 5.09 percent in the first quarter to 5.42 percent
and 6.19 percent in the second and third quarters, respectively,
according to the statistics agency.
The index of industrial
production also rose on the quarterly basis, from 5.3 percent in the
first quarter to 6.9 percent in the second quarter and 7.7 percent in
the July-September period.
Other positive signals include
increases in both foreign direct investment inflow (reaching 8.9 billion
USD, up 3.2 percent) and official development assistance (4.1 billion
USD, up 10 percent compared to the same period last year).-VNA