HÀ NỘI — The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s net purchase of foreign currencies exceeded US$11 billion in the first half of 2018, increasing the nation’s foreign exchange reserves to approximately $63.5 billion.
The figures were announced by SBV Governor Lê Minh Hưng at an online conference between the Government and localities held in Hà Nội on Monday.
He said the SBV had carried out a flexible currency policy to stabilise the average interest rate. The average lending interest rate was reduced by 0.5 percentage points over the January-June period.
Meanwhile, credit grew approximately 6.9 per cent from 2017, with its structure occupied mainly by those lent to the processing-manufacturing sector (16.3 per cent) and rural agriculture (21 per cent), as well as small-and medium-sized businesses (nearly 7.1 per cent).
Hưng stressed that the credit structure had been shifting towards supporting the development of special production areas like exports, rural farming and the processing-manufacturing industry.
He added that over the past six months, the SBV had also sped up the handling of bad debt.
He said a recent increase in the foreign exchange rate was predictable as the US Federal Reserve had raised the interest rates and the dollar had appreciated on the international market.
Hưng stated that the SBV was willing to interfere in the local foreign exchange market if supply or demand problems arose.

Foreign exchange rate unchanged

The State Bank of Việt Nam (SBV) kept its daily reference exchange rate unchanged from the previous day this morning at VNĐ22,635 per US dollar, but commercial banks continued to shift the rate up.
With the current trading band of +/- 3 per cent, the ceiling rate applied to commercial banks during the day was VNĐ23,314 and the floor rate VNĐ21,956 per dollar.

Vietcombank this morning listed the dollar at VNĐ23,005 for buying and VNĐ23,075 for selling, both up VNĐ85.
The buying and selling rates at BIDV rose by VNĐ65.

Techcombank added VNĐ35 to its listed buying rate, bringing it to VNĐ22,935, and VNĐ40 to the selling rate, bringing it to VNĐ23,040.

The US dollar has appreciated significantly against the Vietnamese đồng recently.

According to Phạm Thanh Hà, head of the SBV’s Monetary Policy Department, the recent appreciation of the dollar against the đồng was due to inside and outside impacts such as poor sessions on the domestic stock market and the dollar rising globally.

Commenting on the exchange rate and foreign currency market so far this year, Hà said both were stable in the first five months thanks to a trade surplus, high disbursement of foreign direct investment, big deals with high foreign indirect investment and the stable USD Index.
Hà said the SBV would continue to monitor domestic and world markets with an eye on the impacts of rising US exchange rates, US-China relations, the European Central Bank and Japan’s central bank, as well as domestic foreign currency supply.
“If necessary, the SBV will sell foreign currency at a lower price to stabilise the market, contributing to keeping the macro-economy steady,” stated Hà. — VNS