On April 23, 2024, in Hanoi, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), in collaboration with Vietnam Cooperative Alliance (VCA), organized a Workshop on "Solutions to remove obstacles in accessing credit for the collective economic sector". The Workshop was co-chaired by Ms. Cao Xuan Thu Van, VCA President and Deputy Chairwoman of the National Steering Committee for Collective Economy, and Mr. Dao Minh Tu, First Deputy Governor of the SBV and Member of the National Steering Committee for Collective Economy.
Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu speaks at the Workshop
Also attending the Workshop, there were leaders and representatives of the Ministries, agencies, local authorities; the organizations under Vietnam Cooperative Alliance; several credit institutions, and over 2,400 online participants.
Speaking at the Workshop, Ms. Pham Thi Thanh Tung, Deputy Director General of the SBV Department of Credit for Economic Sectors, emphasized that the SBV had identified the collective economic sector in general and the cooperatives in particular as one of the priority groups for the banks’ credit investment.
Recently, in order to promote the credit growth for the collective economic sector and the cooperatives, the SBV has managed the monetary policy in a proactive and flexible manner, and has utilized synchronous monetary policy tools to regulate the liquidity in an appropriate level, ensuring the stability of the money market. The SBV has requested the credit institutions to continue to promote the credit growth in a safe and effective manner, and to create favorable conditions for businesses, cooperatives and the people to access the banks’ credit, as well as to continue to innovate their lending processes and procedures toward simplifying the procedures and meeting the needs of the client cooperatives, but still ensuring compliance with the legal regulations as well as the credit quality.
According to Ms. Pham Thi Thanh Tung, in the coming time, the SBV would continue to improve the credit mechanisms and policies to create favorable conditions for the cooperatives, such as: Conducting a survey and evaluation of the implementation of Decree No. 55/2015/ND-CP on credit policies for agriculture and rural development; Continuing to review and propose amendments of Circular No. 02/2023/TT-NHNN on rescheduling the debt payment and maintaining the debt categories; Continuing to review to propose amendments of Circular No. 39/2016/TT-NHNN, with a view to promptly removing the difficulties and obstacles arising in practice, after these amendments have been approved by the Government.
In addition, the SBV would continue to coordinate with the relevant Ministries and agencies to propose further support from the Government, such as the Cooperative Development Fund, the technology support policies, and the specific regulations relating to the implementation of the new Cooperative Law (effective from July 1, 2024).
An overview of the Workshop
Also at the Workshop, the participants, the experts and the scientists provided their analyses and assessments on the reasons hindering the cooperatives from accessing the banks’ credit. Most of the reasons are related to the internal conditions of the cooperatives, which cannot meet the banks’ conditions for granting credit, therefore, it is necessary to have support from both central and local authorities in developing specific policy tools for the cooperatives and the related businesses.
In his concluding remarks, Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu confirmed that the development of the collective economic sector with the cooperatives at the core is always a big policy, receiving a lot of attention of the Party and the Government. According to the SBV Deputy Governor, despite the negative impacts on the national economy by external factors, the leadership and the operations of the VCA in the credit access area has achieved a lot of positive results.
For the banking sector, to continue these achievements, the SBV Deputy Governor emphasized that the need to further consider and propose possible more solutions to promote the credit growth and develop the lending networks, as well as other policies to encourage and support the cooperatives to access the banks’ credit. However, in order to ensure the effectiveness of these policies, as well as the cooperatives’ access to the banks’ credit, the cooperatives’ financial and administrative activities must be transparent and efficient.
In addition to the policies, orientations and plans of the State authorities, the efforts of each cooperative play an extremely critical role in order to manage their activities in an appropriate and effective manner.
HY