The interest rate reduction was commonly 0.5-2 percentage points per year (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Commercial banks cut interest rates on 980 trillion VND (42.6billion USD) worth of loans to support 318,000 COVID-19 affected individual andcorporate borrowers by the end of April, the latest data from the State Bank ofVietnam (SBV) showed.
Theinterest rate reduction was commonly 0.5-2 percentage points per year.Some credit institutions even offered a higher rate cut of 2.5-4 percentagepoints per year.
Itwas estimated if the banks cut the rate by 1 percentage points on average forthe 980 trillion VND in loans, their profits will be lowered by at least 100trillion VND.
Bythe end of April, banks also rescheduled debt repayments for more than 170,000customers with loans of nearly 130 trillion VND, according to the SBV’s data.
TheSBV has required commercial banks to further simplify lending procedures tohelp COVID-19-affected firms easily access preferential interest rate loans.However, he noted, banks must still meet lending standards to ensure the safetyand stability of the financial and banking system.
Somebusinesses have recently claimed they could not access new loan packages withpreferential interest rates due to their failure to meet banks’ lendingstandards and proposed that banks ease lending rules.
However,Nghiem Xuan Thanh, chairman of Vietcombank, said most companies that could notaccess the package are inefficiently operating their businesses.
Bankswould not ease lending standards as they must avoid risks, Thanh noted,explaining that the package does not come from the State budget but fromcommercial banks.
EchoingThanh, Tran Hoang Ngan, head of the HCMC Economic Development Institute, saidbanks are themselves businesses so they are always afraid of bad debts.
Accordingto Nguyen Quoc Hung, director of the SBV’s Credit Department, in the currentsituation, it is forecast the bad debt ratio of the banking system willincrease this year and negatively affect the country’s plans to deal with baddebts and recover poor-performing banks./.
