Tin mới
Vietnam considers limiting who can borrow dollars (02/10)
06/08/2010 - 84 Lượt xem
The Vietnam Investment Review weekly quoted Nguyen Dai Lai, deputy director of the State Bank's banking development strategy department, as saying the central bank had drafted a new regulation that would be submitted for government approval later this year.
"The move will help the State Bank better control dollarisation and reduce dollar mobilisation pressure on commercial banks," Lai said.
He said that longer term, the central bank would ban dollar lending altogether, although firms could buy dollars. Bankers said that under such conditions companies would have to borrow dong and then use them to buy dollars if they wanted the U.S. currency.
Bankers in Hanoi said the proposed plans would curb local businesses from taking advantage of lower dollar rates compared with Vietnamese dong rates.
"Dollar loan rates are normally about 7 percent per year now, much lower than dong loan rates which could be as high as 12-15 percent per year. So there is a clear opportunity for arbitrage there," a banker in Hanoi said.
Last month, the government said it would strive to limit credit growth this year to less than 28 percent to combat inflation.
The central bank said in August loans at banks in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in the first seven months of 2007 soared 37.7 percent from a year earlier to VND433.66 trillion ($26.8 billion), on the back of strong economic expansion.
Source: Reuters.
