On August 5, 2020 at the headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), Governor Le Minh Hung had a meeting with Mr. Ivo Sieber, Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation to Vietnam.
At the meeting, Governor Le Minh Hung welcomed Mr. Ivo Sieber to visit and work with the SBV and wished the Swiss Ambassador a successful tenure, contributing to further developing the relations between Vietnam and Switzerland.
The SBV Governor asserted that the Government of Vietnam in general and the SBV in particular always highly treasure the cooperative relations between Vietnam and Switzerland during the last 50 years. Switzerland is among the top 20 countries, and is the sixth largest European country, in terms of foreign direct investment in Vietnam. In addition, the two countries have always maintained a steadily growing bilateral commercial relationship over the years. The SBV Governor expressed his belief that with the EVFTA recently taking effect, the bilateral investment, trade and cooperative relations between the two countries would continue develop strongly.
Sharing about the economic situation in Vietnam and the banking operations, Governor Le Minh Hung informed that, with the active and flexible manner in the management of the monetary and credit policies in coordination with the drastic implementation of various measures and support programs for enterprises and individuals to overcome the difficulties caused by the coronavirus outbreaks, the banking sector has obtained many significant results: the liquidity has been ensured; the money market has been remained stable; the inter-bank interest rates have been kept at low levels; the lending rates have been reduced considerably; the exchange rates and the foreign exchange market have been stable; the state foreign reserves have continued to increased, thereby contributing to maintaining the stability of the business environment, improving the national trustworthiness rating and the investors’ confidence in order to attract more investment resources for the economic recovery.
An overview of the meeting
For his part, Mr. Ivo Sieber thanked Governor Le Minh Hung for his hospitality and expressed his impressions with the drastic and timely measures of the Government of Vietnam, as well as the high consensus of Vietnamese people in response to the Covid-19 outbreaks, helping to contain the infection in the community. He added that the SBV has regulated the monetary policies in an active and flexible manner, drastically conducted measures and programs to support enterprises and individuals to overcome the difficulties caused by the coronavirus outbreaks. Those results of the banking industry have greatly contributed to stabilizing the macro-economy, supporting economic growth and ensuring social protection.
At the meeting, Governor Le Minh Hung and Ambassador Ivo Sieber also exchanged their views about the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy in general and the banking sector in particular, as well as the situation of the restructuring of the banking system and the SBV’s priorities in the coming time. The SBV Governor expressed hope to enhance the cooperative relations with the Government of Switzerland through SECO in the fields of promoting safe and sound banking operations, training programs for bank managers, strengthening the legal framework for banking operations, strengthening the capabilities of banking inspection and supervision, accelerating the handling of non-performing loans (NPL), enhancing the capabilities of the banking staff, etc.
Le Hang