On the morning of July 24, 2020, at the Headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong chaired a virtual meeting between the SBV and the US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC).
The meeting focused on the Government of Vietnam 's priorities and policies during the outbreaks of the Covid-19 pandemic, plans to recover the economy in general, and the banking sector’s policies and priorities in particular. At the same time, the USABC shared its assessments on the regional situation as well as initiatives and recommendations from the US business community that might be submitted to the ASEAN Finance Ministers' and Central Bank Governors' Meeting.
Also attending the meeting, on the side of the SBV there were leaders of a number of the SBV departments and agencies. On the USABC side, there were Mr. Alexander C. Feldman, President & CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council (Head of the Mission), Mr. Michael W. Michalak, former United States Ambassador to Vietnam, Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director for the US-ASEAN Business Council (co-Head of Mission), and other officers of the USABC, as well as representatives of several member companies operating in Vietnam and ASEAN such as Citi, Facebook, Chubb, American Express, etc.
Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong chaired the meeting
At the meeting, the SBV shared that, in order to remove the difficulties for production and business operations in the context of complicated developments of the Covid-19 pandemic, the SBV has been proactively, strongly and effectively implementing management solutions, and issuing timely policies to support the economy, such as (i) Ensuring adequate supplies of liquidity in order to promptly meet the needs of the economy, control inflation, stabilize the macro economy and improve the business environment, minimize the negative impacts of the epidemic; (ii) Reducing the interest rates; (iii) Stabilizing the operations of the foreign currency market and the exchange rates; (iv) Directing the credit institutions to focus all resources, simplify lending procedures to improve the accessibility to capital of the economy, reduce the lending rates and profits to support their customers; (v) Promoting online payments, cashless payments; (vi) Issuing Circular 01 to create a facilitating legal corridor for the credit institutions to resolve loan issues for their customers; in addition, organizing 14 Bank-Enterprise Connection Conferences across the country and will continue to organize more Conferences to promptly remove the difficulties for the banks’ customers.
Despite the complicated developments of COVID-19 and the fact that the world economy has fallen into sharp recession, the domestic economy has still seen several bright spots. Vietnam’s GDP growth in the first 6 months reached 1.81% - among the few countries with positive growths, and a clear recovery was seen in May and June, and is expected to continue in the second half of 2020. The core inflation has been constantly declining, currently standing at 2.81%, helping to control the average inflation at 4.19% and on a downward trend. The SBV has also been proactively implementing many measures and issuing policies to support the economy after the pandemic.
The USABC congratulated and made high evaluation of Vietnam's efforts and results in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, the Mission also added some comments and suggestions to support Vietnam to regain its growth momentum at an early stage. Representatives from the USABC presented two reports with the themes "Sustainable finance and adaptation to the 4th industrial revolution in 2020" and "Research on responses and recovery after Covid-19 pandemic in ASEAN", making recommendations on strengthening the environmental and social risk management in financial activities, promoting green, social and sustainable bonds, enhancing private investments to finance health and digital infrastructure, etc. Most of the recommendations from the USABC focused on the trends of applying digital technologies in the process of digitalisation of banking operations and applying solutions for non-cash payment development.
In her conclusion at the meeting, the SBV Deputy Governor spoke highly of the cooperation between the US business community and Vietnam's regulatory agencies in monitoring and evaluating the regional economic situations and making policy recommendations. The SBV pledged to continue to cooperate and talk with the USABC in order to finalize the initiatives and recommendations to be submitted to the ASEAN Finance Ministers' and Central Bank Governors' Meeting, which is expected to take place in October 2020. The SBV Deputy Governor also expressed her hopes that the USABC would continue to enhance its cooperation and dialogues with the ASEAN member countries through bilateral and regional forums in order to propose and promote cooperation initiatives, especially in the field of finance and banking, contributing to the regional economic development.
VA