Vietnam's foreign exchange reserves will recover to the level of three months of imports.(Photo: nhadautu.vn) Analysts of VNDirect have made forecasts and said that with the US FederalReserve (Fed) slowing down the rate of interest rate hikes this year andimproving Vietnamese foreign exchange reserves, it would stop the decline priceof Vietnamese dong.
At the same time, the rate at the end of this year is likely to decrease by 1-2%.
Besides, experts also expect a trade surplus of 13.4 billion USD this year,from a trade surplus of 12.4 billion USD last year.
In addition, the current account will turn into a surplus at 1.4% of GDP thisyear from a projected deficit of 0.8% of GDP last year.
According to data published in March 2022, Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves areat a record high of nearly 110 billion USD.
However, after that, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) faced many difficulties inbalancing the three main goals of controlling inflation, stabilising exchangerates and interest rates to support growth.
SBV had to sell a large amount of foreign exchange reserves to stabilise theexchange rate, which is estimated at approximately 20% of foreign exchangereserves, in the first 10 months of last year.
This has caused Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves to fall below the levelrecommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when it was less thanthree months of imports.
VNDirect expects a trade surplus of 12 billion USD next year, from an expectedtrade surplus of 10.4 billion USD last year.
At the same time, VNDirect also expects the current account to turn into asurplus in to 0.4% of GDP this year from a projected deficit of 1.3% of GDPlast year.
Therefore, the securities company said that Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserveswill recover to the level of three months of imports and reach 102 billion USDby the end of this year from the current level of 89 billion USD.
However, VNDirect said that there were several key risks to the forecastincluding higher-than-expected inflation and a stronger-than-expected US dollarwhich could put additional pressure on the Vietnamese dong and thestronger-than-expected recession of Vietnam’s major trading partners.
In fact, Vietnamese dong once depreciated by 7-8% last year compared tothe end of 2021, but by the last trading day of last year, Vietnamese dongonly depreciated by 3.53%, equivalent to half of the two previous months./.
VNA
