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No more opportunities for dollar-surfing investors
Experts say that dollar price fever attacks will not take place from now till the end of the year, therefore, there will not be business opportunities for surfers.
When the dollar soared right after the decision about the petrol price hike was announced, a lot of people thought that a new dollar price increase wave had begun, and they rushed to buy dollars to sell later for profit.
However, contrary to their expectations, the dollar price only increased slightly on July 21, then dropped dramatically, making a lot of surfing investors suffer heavy losses.
Prior to that, a dollar fever broke out in June 2008, which pushed the dollar price to VND19,500/US$1, an increase of 20% over one month earlier, which had never been seen before. The dollar fever was attributed to the fact that people, fearing the high inflation and the value decrease of the local currency, rushed to purchase dollars to keep up under their pillows. Meanwhile, exporters, who have dollars in accounts, did not sell dollars for fear that the prices would go up further.
The fever was eased when the State Bank of Vietnam publicly announced its foreign currency reserves and pushed up sales to improve the supply. The fever reduction left a lot of investors regretting that they did not sell dollars when the prices were high, while other investors felt happy that they did not buy dollars at high prices.
Quoc Huy, an overseas labourer who has just returned to Vietnam, said that he regretted not selling dollars when the prices were high since he thought the price would go up further. Now, as the dollar price has decreased, he has lost VND60-70mil.
Experts affirm that no more dollar fever attacks will occur in 2008. It is expected that export turnover will exceed $61bil, an increase of 27% over 2007. There has been no official figure given about overseas remittance, but commercial banks say overseas remittance has been very satisfactory.
Vietcombank, which holds 20% of the overseas remittance market, said that $730mil worth of overseas remittance went through the bank in H1. Therefore, the total overseas remittance to Vietnam might have reached $3.6bil in H1. If the current growth rate can be maintained, the total overseas remittance will be over $7bil this year (it was $6bil last year).
Regarding foreign direct investment, experts say some $10bil worth of capital will be disbursed this year. Besides the two channels, Vietnam will also have foreign currencies from foreign portfolio investment, aid from international financial institutions and official development assistance (ODA).
VNN
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