In the first half of the year, 3.5 billion USD in overseas remittances were transferred to Vietnam , Deputy Director of the SBV’s Foreign Exchange Management Department, Nguyen Ngoc Lan, told a Vietnam News Agency reporter.

The Joint Stock (JS) Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, the Dong A JS Bank, the Saigon Thuong Tin Bank, and the A Chau JS Bank said they transferred between 400 million USD to 750 million USD in overseas remittances in those months.

According to the SBV official, the Government’s flexible foreign exchange management and preferential treatments offered to overseas Vietnamese, including a policy allowing overseas Vietnamese to buy houses in the homeland, has drawn more overseas remittances.

Additionally, the country’s stable exchange rate policy and international financial institutions’ upbeat assessments on Vietnam’s economy in mid and long terms were other factors to convince overseas Vietnamese to remit home more money, Lan said.

He added that remittances, which used to stand at several hundreds of USD each transaction in the past, now amounted to thousands or tens of thousands of US dollar for investment in business or savings.

More overseas Vietnamese opted to deposit money in banks in the homeland due to the 7-8 percent interest rate applicable for USD deposits rather than keeping in their host countries’ banks, whose interest rate stands at 2-3 percent, the State Bank official said.

Banks provided the fact that though overseas remittances have still come mostly from Vietnamese living in the US, Australia, and European countries, more are coming from Vietnamese experts, students and guest workers.

To attract more clients, many banks and companies engaged in transferring money have improved their services, including opening agents in new markets and strengthening old ones in the US and Australia where the majority of Vietnamese are residing in.

Recently, the Dong A Bank has partnered with the MoneyGram company to provide the delivery of overseas remittances in gold, foreign currencies or VND, to requested addresses.

The SBV official said overseas remittances have contributed to increasing the country’s foreign currency reserve to improve the balance of trade and capital, particularly at a time when the country’s trade deficit has reached an alarming rate.

Source: VNA