Almost after 20 days since the negotiated lending rate was allowed to be applied on medium and long term loans of the dong, commercial banks in turn have imposed a new lending rate policy at common 16-17 percent pa. This marks a big gap between lending rate for production business and consumer purposes.
In recent days, sources said that the negotiated lending rate of the dong surpassed 20 percent pa, even climbed to 30 percent pa on March 17. However, some commercial banks said such high cost loans only accounted for a small rate.
Talking to Thoi Bao Kinh Te Vietnam newspaper, a credit official of Saigon Hanoi Commercial JS Bank (SHB) said that the high lending rates mainly were applied on consumer loans. Twenty percent pa is fairly high and 30 percent pa is in special cases. At SHB, the medium and long term negotiated lending rates range between 15 and 16 percent pa as for corporate customers, 16-18 percent pa for consumer loans.
As for corporates, the lending rate of 16-17 percent pa is acceptable. Meanwhile, banks are finding it difficult to lend loans at 17-18 percent pa because they have to consider the risks and efficiency of funded projects carefully. Factually, high lending rates are embedded with higher risks, the official stressed.
An official of SeABank-HCM City branch said that the lending rates for both enterprises and individuals stand at 15-17 percent pa. Particularly, the very high lending rate of 30 percent pa is only applied on some small consumer loans by few financial companies. The loans are mainly provided to the customers demanding to purchase electronic equipments, computers and motorbikes.
Currently, the lending rate of 20-22 percent pa is applied on overdraft loans via cards at some banks, lower rates at loans for car purchase, mortgage loans and loans for house repairing, he added.
Lyndsay Rajah-director of HSBC Vietnam's individual finance service said that the bank's consumer lending rate is not the highest level on the market. Banks have different ways to calculate and apply loan rates on each group of customers. Some times, customers can misunderstand about total real fees they have to pay to loan providers.
“At HSBC, we calculate lending rates based on the monthly real outstanding loan of customers instead of principle debt whereby customers will have to pay low interest rates because the loans will reduce month by month”, he said.
Comparing between the consumer lending rate of 14 percent pa calculated based on principle debts and the loan rate of 22 percent on gradually decreasing debts, 22 percent pa will be beneficial as for borrowers.
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