In Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), on the morning of January 25, 2018, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) held a conference to provide information about the banking performance in 2017 and orientations for 2018.
The Conference was chaired by Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong, with the attendance of the representatives from the Monetary Policy Department, the Credit Department, the Communication Department, as well as reporters from the media agencies in HCMC.
At the Conference, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong said that the remarkable achievements in the SBV’s management of monetary policy in 2017 contributed to controlling the inflation, stabilizing the macro-economy and boosting the economic growth. Specifically, the core inflation was kept at 1.41%, making room for the adjustments of the prices of the state-managed services; the common lending interest rates decreased by 0.5-1% p.a; the credit growth was reasonable (18.17%) with the main focus on production and business activities; the money market was stable with high liquidity, etc. Moreover, the exchange rates and forex market were managed in an active and flexible manner to fully meet the legitimate demand for foreign currencies of the economy. The foreign-exchange reserves have reached a new record high, contributing significantly to the strengthening of the country's prestige and position, thus creating confidence for foreign investors when investing in Vietnam. The banking sector focused its resources drastically on the second phase of the restructuring and handling of the Non-Performing Loans (NPL) and has achieved many important initial results. In particular, the Government’s approval of the Scheme on “Restructuring the credit institutions system associated with the settlement of bad debts toward 2020” and the National Assembly’s passing of Resolution No. 42 piloting the settlement of bad debts, the Law on Amendments and Supplements to a number of articles of the Law on Credit Institutions, have provided the foundation and an important impetus for the acceleration of the restructuring process associated with bad debts settlement. Besides, the administrative reforms throughout the banking system continued to achieve positive results, creating a more open environment, simplifying the procedures and improving the access to credit and banking services, providing great support to production and business activities. Especially, the Communication Department managed to produce several financial education programs which have received high recognition by the public, such as the reality show “Smart Kids” on VTV1 channel, and the game show “Smart Money” on VTV3 channel.
Those positive results have been praised by many prestigious international organizations. For example, the World Bank has raised Vietnam's "Access to Credit" index by three levels and Vietnam now ranks fourth in ASEAN; Moody's raised the outlook for Vietnam's banking system from "stable" to "positive"; and Bloomberg commented that the Vietnamese Dong is one of the most stable currencies in Asia...
Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong added that in 2018, the SBV is determined to successfully implement the assigned tasks and continue to manage the monetary policy flexibly to ensure the inflation control at a low level and support the economic growth at high level. Apart from that, the SBV will strictly and effectively implement the National Assembly’s Resolution 42 on piloting the settlement of bad debts, the Law on Amendments and Supplements to a number of articles of the Law on Credit Institutions, and the Scheme on “Restructuring the credit institutions system associated with the settlement of bad debts toward 2020”…
Also at the Conference, Mr. Pham Thanh Ha, Director General of the Monetary Policy Department, and Mr. Tran Van Tan, Deputy Director General of the Credit Department, provided more information and answered the audience’s questions about the exchange rate management, orientations for the credit management, especially credit for potentially risky sectors such as real estate and securities.
Exchanging their views at the conference, many reporters gave positive comments on the results of the monetary policy management and the banking performance in 2017 and highly appreciated the proactive cooperation of the Communication Department in the process of providing the media with banking information, thereby helping correspondents to promptly reflect issues of public concerns, as well as to enhance the public confidence in the banking sector.
At the conclusion of the conference, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong stressed that 2018 is a decisive year in the implementation of the country’s development plan between 2016-2020, creating a momentum for the achievement of the targets set for the whole term. Therefore, in order to implement the assigned tasks of ensuring macro-economic stability, controlling inflation at below 4% and enabling the high economic growth rate of 6.7%, the SBV in 2018 will continue to manage the monetary policy in an active and flexible manner in conjunction with the fiscal policy and other macro-economic policies with the purpose of ensuring the stability of macro balances and the inflation control, as well as supporting the economic growth at a reasonable level and ensuring a prudent banking system.
About the communication activities, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong directed the Communication Department to continue researching, proposing and coordinating with the press agencies to promote the financial education and communication programs to improve the public awareness of finance, confidence and change the customers’ behaviors when using financial and banking services.
Le Hang