Outstanding loans in US dollars at commercial banks in HCM City reached 172.5 trillion dong, making up 28.2 percent of total outstanding loans, up 44.2 percent compared to the same period last year, while outstanding loans in dong rose 20.5 percent, according to the HCM City Statistics Office.
Nguyen Huu Dang, director general of HD Bank said that, export companies are now borrowing dollars at an interest rate of 5 percent - 5.5 percent per year (3-6 months) and import companies are offered with dollar loans at 5.5 percent to 6.5 percent per year, which is seen quite attractive in comparison with dong negotiable interest rates ranging from 13 percent to 14 percent a year.
"If no big changes from now to the end of this year occur, the demand for loans in US dollar from export and import businesses would be higher than loans in dong," Dang forecast.
However, according to economic experts, at this time, commercial banks should be also careful to promote the development of the dollar credit, especially in the context of outstanding US dollar loans of the entire banking system to total mobilised dollars in excess of about 40 trillion dong at present.
Thus, the increased deposit rates in the dollar by banks are recently also aimed to again balance the supply - demand, especially banks have boosted lending in dollars during the past seven months.
On the other hand, many financial experts say that companies who need to borrow the dollar loans used for billing purposes must also carefully calculate the growth rate of outstanding loans at a high level in seven months is also a issue of concern. The reason is the possibility of rising dollar demand to repay bank debts (when more dollar lending contracts matures) would affect the supply of dollars, which may put more pressures on interest rates.
Therefore, the best is that only companies, who have revenues in dollars, should consider new loans in dollars. Moreover, banks also need to select customers for greenback loans, especially for businesses that are importing raw materials to produce goods for sales in the domestic market and have no revenues in dollars. In addition, enterprises should use foreign currency exchange rate hedging measures.
Dr Tran Du Lich, member of National Currency - Financial Advisory Council says that after the inter-bank rates increased recently, importers that do not have revenues in the foreign currency will surely have to switch to borrow dong loans.
Specifically, compared to before August 30, the exchange rates of many commercial banks are now higher than 300-400 dong/US dollar (reaching 19,500 dong/US dollar - sold out).
In fact, many export companies are continuing to choose dollar loans, rather than switch to dong ones as predictions were made previously. Thus, banks are continuously raising deposit interest rates in the greenback aimed at drawing dollar capital to meet the needs of businesses.
Most recently, Southern Bank has increased interest rates on dollars savings, with the extra rate increase from 0.4 percent to 0.7 percent per year. Previously, Vietnam Eximbank raised deposit rates in US dollars to the maximum of 4.45 percent per year, while the Asia Commercial Bank also increased the rate from 0.15 to 0.20 percent per annum for US dollar deposits. The savings interest rates in US dollars are also adjusted higher at small-scale banks.
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