This year, the Việt nam Asset Management Company would promote the foundation of a debt trading platform to establish a centralised market for trading bad debts. – Photo vietnamnet.vn

HÀ NỘI – The Việt Nam Asset Management Company (VAMC) targeted to settle bad debts worth totally VNĐ50 trillion (US$2.15 billion) this year.

It also planned to issue VNĐ15 trillion worth of special bonds to buy non-performing loans of credit institutions and spend VNĐ5 trillion in cash to buy another VNĐ5 trillion of NPLs at market prices.

According to Đoàn Văn Thắng, VAMC’s general director, VAMC was also promoting the foundation of a debt trading platform together with an AMC club to exchange experience and information so as to establish a centralised market for trading bad debts.

This year, VAMC also expected to get the Government's approval to double its charter capital to VNĐ10 trillion to improve its financial capacity.

Under the project of restructuring the system of credit institutions in association with handling bad debts in the 2016-20 period approved by the Prime Minister on July 19, 2017, VAMC planned to raise its charter capital to VNĐ10 trillion. However, in November 2017, the Prime Minister only allowed VAMC to increase its charter capital to VNĐ5 trillion.

According to VAMC’s recent report, the company reclaimed bad debts worth around VNĐ69.78 trillion in 2019 compared to the sum of VNĐ30.9 trillion in 2018.

Last year, VAMC bought 381 bad debts of nine credit institutions worth more than VNĐ20.5 trillion by special bonds at the price of nearly VNĐ19.8 trillion.

The company also bought 37 bad debts at market prices and helped credit institutions handle more than VNĐ2.13 trillion of bad debts.

Since its foundation in 2013 to the end of December 2019, VAMC used special bonds to buy bad debts worth VNĐ359.39 trillion at the price of VNĐ327.4 trillion. In addition, it spent VNĐ8.2 trillion to buy bad debts worth VNĐ8 trillion at market prices.

The central bank predicted that bad debts would increase this year due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, given that 23 per cent of the total outstanding loans, or VNĐ2 quadrillion, were in sectors suffering from the pandemic. In the best scenario, the ratio of bad debts would be at around 2.6-3 per cent by the year end. - VNS