Hanoi (VNA) – Three credit institutions havecommitted to sponsoring the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines to get loansworth 4 trillion VND (173.67 million USD), an official from the State Bank ofVietnam (SBV) said on June 21.
The credit institutions are the Southeast AsiaCommercial Joint Stock Bank (SeABank), the Vietnam Maritime Commercial JointStock Bank (MSB) and the Saigon - Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB).
According to Nguyen Tuan Anh, Director of the CreditDepartment for Economic Sectors under the SBV, the three banks and VietnamAirlines are completing procedures and negotiations for credit agreements todisburse the loans late June or early July.
Earlier, the carrier proposed a support packageworth 12 trillion VND to deal with difficulties caused by COVID-19, includingrefinancing loans worth 4 trillion VND.
Vietnam Airlines said despite the recovery of thewhole domestic market, it has still lost more than 60 percent of revenue due tointernational routes yet to be resumed.
Last November, the National Assembly issued aresolution allowing the central bank to refinance and offer loan extensions nomore than two times to banks that would lend Vietnam Airlines additional capitalfor the company to continue its operations.
In March, the Prime Minister also signed a decisionallowing the SBV to provide refinancing loans worth 4 trillion VND to creditinstitutions that are lenders of the national flag carrier.
Last year, Vietnam Airlines posted a revenue of over 40.61trillion VND, down 59 percent from 2019.
It conducted around 96,500 flights in the year, a dropof more than 48 percent as compared with the previous year due to the impact ofCOVID-19.
The carrier served 14.23 million passengers andhandled nearly 195,000 tonnes of cargo, decreases of 51 percent and 47 percent,respectively./.