Workshop backs SMEs in loan access, payment in foreign trade

Hai Phong (VNA) – A workshop took place in northern Hai Phong city on August 4 to provide information on loan access and methods of payment in international trade for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The event, held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade), forms part of a three-year project funded by Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to enhance capacity of SMEs in Vietnam via local trade promotion agencies which started in 2013.

Speaking at the workshop, Vietrade Deputy Director Do Kim Lang said globalization and free trade have motivated robust development of exports and imports, however, many Vietnamese SMEs are not familiar with accessing loans from banks for foreign trade activities.

Statistics show that SMEs with revenues of less than 20 billion VND a year accounted for about 70 percent of more than 700,000 companies across the country. They have found it hard to access to formal loans, instead many of them have sought funding from informal sources, Lang noted.

Deeper global integration is likely to come together with increase in bad debts and risks in payment if the firms do not actively update themselves with knowledge and learn from others’ experience in international trade, he warned.

To help the firms solve the problems, the workshop focused discussion on finance management in foreign trade, financial solutions and methods for accessing loans, several outstanding financial solutions for Vietnamese exporters, risks in international payments and how to minimize them, and more.-VNA