On October 30-31, 2019, the 17th Meeting of the Vietnam-Russia Working Group on Banking Cooperation was organized in the province of Quang Ninh. The Meeting was co-chaired by Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and Deputy Governor Dmitry Skobelkin of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
Also attending the Meeting were representatives from the SBV entities, leaders of NAPAS and several commercial banks and enterprises. On the side of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, there were representatives from the relevant units and participants from commercial banks, financial institutions and enterprises.
At the plenary session of the Working Group, the two Deputy Governors reviewed the results obtained during the past year since the 16th Meeting, and made high evaluation of the close coordination between the relevant units of the two central banks in handling with the specific issues based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in the previous meeting.
Regarding the cooperation in the banking sector, despite the difficulties and challenges, the commercial banks of the two countries have promoted the two-way payments for trade transactions and achieved encouraging results. In the first 6 months of 2019, trade payment turnover reached USD 1.15 billion, nearly equal the level of USD 1.3 billion in 2017 and USD 1.36 billion in 2018. Among Vietnamese commercial banks, Vietnam - Russia Joint Venture Bank (VRB) is currently the most active bank in deploying payments in the local currencies. In the recent years, the two central banks have actively implemented cooperation arrangements in areas such as exchanging information on payment systems, and banking supervision and inspection, as well as researching capabilities and preparing for the VND/RUB tradings in the Moscow Exchange.
An overview of the 17th Meeting of Vietnam-Russia Working Group on Banking Cooperation
About the card payment area, just before the Meeting, the two sides completed a technical connection for card payment between the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) and the Russia's National Payment Card System Joint Stock Company (NSPK) and successfully implemented Russia's MIR card acceptance in Vietnam on October 29, 2019 within the framework of the 22nd Session of the Vietnam-Russia Intergovernmental Committee under the witness of the two Deputy Prime Ministers of the two countries. This connection will facilitate the payment transactions of Russian visitors in Vietnam.
Participants of the 17th Meeting of the Vietnam-Russia Working Group on Banking Cooperation
The two sides agreed that in the coming time, it is necessary to continue to focus on addressing the issues to promote the use of the local currencies in trade payments, and to implement the acceptance of NAPAS chip cards (VCCS) in Russia; further research and exchange to prepare for the deployment of VND/RUB tradings in the Moscow Exchange. In addition, the two sides also agreed to study cooperation possibilities in areas such as cyber security and human resource training.
The 18th Meeting of the Vietnam-Russia Working Group on Banking Cooperation will be organized in the Russian Federation in 2020.
Le Hang