Commercial banks have one more year to comply with stricter new minimum capital requirements.
The Prime Minister on Dec.4 set a new deadline of December 31, 2011, for banks to comply with the requirement that they maintain a minimum charter capital of 3 trillion VND (141.71 million USD).
He has instructed the State Bank of Vietnam to work with related agencies to amend Decree No 141, which sets the deadline at the end of this month.
The State Bank had earlier vowed that the deadline was hard-and-fast, since banks had had four years to prepare for compliance, and warned that banks failing to meet the deadline would face closure or forced merger or acquisition.
However, the process of increasing charter capital had been complicated for many banks by the global financial crisis, the withdrawal of investment by State shareholders, and a gloomy domestic securities market, said the head of the State Bank's supervisory and inspection department, Duong Quoc Anh.
"The fact that the Government has discouraged State-owned economic groups from investing in non-core business lines and instructed these groups to revoke such investments has caused big trouble for a number of financial institutions," Anh wrote on the State Bank website.
State-owned garment maker Vinatex, for instance, recently sold an 11-percent interest in Navibank, one of the banks unable to meet the new requirements.
In prior proposals to the Government, the central bank had insisted on the higher charter capital requirements in order to improve the security and capacity of the nation's banking system.
By the end of October, 22 commercial banks not yet in compliance had received State Bank approval to increase registered capital from an average of nearly 1.6 trillion VND (75.57 million USD) to an average of 3.5 trillion VND (165.32 million USD). Eleven of these banks had received State Securities Commission approval to raise additional funds by offering shares.
The State Bank has previously extended deadlines for commercial banks to meet higher capital requirements. Commercial banks were required by law to register capital of at least 1 trillion VND(52 million USD) by the end of 2008, but only 28 banks had met the requirement by the deadline. Another 10 managed to meet it only as late as the end of 2009, with the central bank granting permission for the delayed compliance./.
