Monetary policies have produced good results so far, but there is still
room for improvement, constituents concluded after the Governor of the
State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Nguyen Van Binh responded to questions
during the 31st session of the National Assembly Standing Committee in
Hanoi on September 29.
Quang Tung, Director of the ACB
Bank branch in the northern province of Quang Ninh, acknowledged that
exchange rates for the US Dollar and Vietnamese Dong were stable, while
interest rates had declined, particularly lending rates on foreign
currencies.
Nguyen Thanh Nam, Deputy Director of the State
Treasury in Quang Ninh, spoke highly of the restructuring scheme for the
banking sector in 2011-2015. He praised the settlement of
non-performing loans (NPLs) by the Vietnam Asset Management Company
(VAMC), a government-backed entity established last year to restructure
bad debts and bank collaterals.
Commercial banks are under
sound management, which means they are less exposed to credit risks,
especially real estate credit, he said.
Other experts
stressed the importance of investing capital carefully since the rate of
eradicating NPLs, which hinder economic development, remained slow.
VAMC bought up around 60 trillion VND (2.8 billion USD) of bad
debt, but the situation has yet to improve drastically, Nguyen Van
Thuan, Dean of the Finance and Banking Faculty at the Ho Chi Minh City
Open University, warned.
However, he hailed the recent
stimulus package to provide State officials access to housing loans of 2
billion VND (95,000 USD) each, saying it would fuel the property
market, and at the same time, address NPLs, since the majority of NPLs
are in real estate.
Tran Thuc Hien, Director General of the
Thai Anh Trade and Production Co.Ltd, agreed that the monetary policies
introduced are proper. She, however, raised the issue of implementing
these policies efficiently, benefiting businesses which are struggling
to gain access to capital for production.-VNA