On January 16-18, 2024, Governor Nguyen Thi Hong of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) joined the delegation of the Government of Vietnam led by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to attend the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
WEF 2024 with the theme of “Rebuilding Trust” was attended by nearly 100 leaders of governments and international institutions, and about 3,000 leaders of global companies and corporations. At the Plenary Session, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh spoke highly of WEF 2024’s theme, and asserted that this was a practical, appropriate theme, with an important meaning in the current context. And WEF 2024 is believed to contribute to the process of enhancing trust, promoting the international solidarity, inspiring all countries, and joining hands for the development of human beings.
Within the framework of her business trip, on January 16, 2024, under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, Governor Nguyen Thi Hong and other leaders from the Vietnamese Ministries and agencies attended and delivered speeches at the seminars and dialogue sessions with the global companies and corporations; attended the Prime Minister’s meetings with leaders from Switzerland, Belgium, the Republic of Korea, etc.
At the two sessions of the WEF Policy Dialogue with the topics of "The next development horizon: Promoting transformation, opening up new growth drivers in Vietnam" and "Vietnam: Orienting a global vision", the Prime Minister discussed with the participants Vietnam's growth drivers and development orientations, as well as Vietnam's consistent viewpoint in the development process. The Prime Minister affirmed that transformations, finding and generating new growth drivers are an objective and inevitable trend in the world today. Vietnam is accelerating the transformations, including the economic transformation, renewing the old growth drivers and promoting new growth drivers, with lots of efforts in promoting the digital transformation, the green transition, transformations in the mechanisms and policies, building strategic infrastructure for the transformations, etc.
Governor Nguyen Thi Hong speaks at a Seminar
At the Seminars, the SBV Governor shared that the banking industry has always focused on the digital transformation to help generating common growth drivers for the country through the issuance and implementation of various policies to promote the digital transformation in the banking industry. A lot of innovative, user-friendly and convenient payment products and services, such as payments via Mobile Banking and QR Codes have been introduced, applying modern technology, meeting the customers’ diversified payment demands. The ecosystem for the banking digital products and services has been developed and connected with a lot of other services in the economy.
In addition, the SBV always pays great attention to promoting the energy transition and green growth. The improvement of the legal frameworks for green credit, and the environmental and social risk management in the credit operations have been accelerated with practical lessons absorbed from the international experience. With the support of the international organizations, the SBV has promptly developed and issued many strategies, plans and schemes on green banking development, and has actively mobilized resources from the international financial institutions to contribute to realizing the country’s sustainable development goals.
The domestic credit institutions have steadily developed their own green financial frameworks, improved their organizational structure and personnel to promote the investment in green growth, and strengthened the environmental and social risk management in the credit operations. Over the past 6 years (2017-2023), the loan outstanding for green sectors has increased by over 22% on average per year. As of December 31, 2023, the loan outstanding for green credit had reached over 600 trillion VND, accounting for over 4.4% of the total loan outstanding of the economy, focusing mainly on the renewable and clean energy industry (accounting for nearly 45%).
On the same day, the SBV Governor also attended another seminar on "Cooperation in developing artificial intelligence (AI), automotive technology, semiconductor chips, and ecosystems related to these industries" under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. Sharing at the Seminar, Governor Nguyen Thi Hong said that as a capital channel for the economy, the banking industry recognizes the importance of the digital transformation for the socio-economic development. Thanks to the application of the digital technology, many safer, more effective and more convenient digital banking services have been introduced. To be able to digitize the credit granting, which is one of the most important operations of the banking industry, it takes time and must ensure the ability to connect data, both structured and unstructured, to have full information to verify the customer's ability to repay a debt. Therefore, the cooperation in developing AI is to create a foundation for the ability to collect, analyze and process data in support of the credit granting operations on the digital channels in the future.
The Prime Minister, the Ministers and the SBV Governor meet multilateral organizations on the sideline of WEF 2024 in Davos
In the afternoon of January 16, 2024, the SBV Governor attended the Prime Minister's meetings with leaders of several leading corporations in the fields of technology, e-commerce, finance, and tourism. At the meetings, the Prime Minister emphasized that with the spirit of harmonious benefits and shared risks, Vietnam has created favorable conditions based on the provisions of laws for foreign investors to make effective investment in Vietnam.
Sharing at the meeting with leaders of Visa Inc., Governor Nguyen Thi Hong acknowledged the active cooperation of Visa Inc. with the SBV, including the cooperation for promoting financial inclusion in line with the Party’s and the Government’s directives towards the goal of ‘no one is left behind’, realizing the objectives of the socio-economic development.
An overview of a bilateral meeting
The SBV Governor continued to attend other events at WEF 2024 in Davos on January 27, 2024 before joining the Prime Minister’s official visits to Hungary and Romania.
Le Hang