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Plans market operations, refinancing to slow inflation
Vietnam's central bank plans open-market operations and refinancing activities in the next six months to tame the fastest inflation since at least 1992.
The Southeast Asian nation is planning the measures to keep credit growth below 30 percent this year, according to a statement posted on its website this week.
Credit will be more closely monitored, with loans to be granted principally to efficient agricultural businesses and to exporters, the central bank said.
The State Bank of Vietnam increased its benchmark rate three times this year to 14 percent, the highest in Asia, to reduce gains in consumer prices from 25.2 percent.
Slowing inflation is the government's biggest priority, Minister of Finance Vu Van Ninh told participants at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Kuala Lumpur this week.
The State Bank of Vietnam also plans to set up a project to prevent speculation on foreign currency, the statement said, without giving details.
Demand for the US dollar has been increasing, widening the gap between the official value of Vietnam's dong and the so-called free-market rate, Nguyen Quang Huy, Hanoi-based director of the State Bank's banking-management department said last month.
Thanhnien
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