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Disbursement slow, banks seeking borrowers
Most businesses that received loans under the interest rate subsidy program at banks’ are old clients who paid old debts to get new loans, while there have been few new clients. Commercial banks have committed that the disbursement under the program has been going slowly.
Banks looking for borrowers
A banker said that banks have to maintain caution in disbursing capital under the interest rate subsidy program, as the central bank will later examine if the capital goes to the right subjects.
Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) had disbursed less than VND1 trillion as of February 24, though the volume of capital businesses registered to borrow is seven times bigger.
Eximbank said that it had received 1,000 applications for loans under the interest rate subsidy program. The bank had approved the loans worth VND2,030 billion, of which nearly VND1 trillion had been disbursed by mid-last week. The disbursement rate proves to be low at small scale banks.
ACB said that most businesses that have received loans under the programm are old clients. These are the businesses that paid old debts at high interest rates, to get the new loans with subsidized interest rates.
A banker said that it is very difficult to find good clients to lend to, adding that only several good businesses can be found among 100 businesses.
“In fact, the program was just kicked off three weeks ago. Meanwhile, it takes at least one or two weeks to check the applications for getting loans. Therefore, it is understandable why there have been only few customers,” said Do Minh Toan, Deputy General Director of ACB.
Meanwhile, according to Pham Xuan Hong, Director of Saigon 3 Garment Company, it is not so easy to access loans with low interest rates of 1-2% per annum. In return for low interest rate loans, enterprises have to promise to sell dollars to banks at the exchange rate of the day when the capital is disbursed.
Disbursement will be sped up
Meanwhile, the report by the State Bank of Vietnam showed that the VND interest rate on the interbank market moved up a little last week, which meant a higher demand for capital disbursement.
Several banks have raised the deposit interest rates to approximately 8% per annum, and launched promotion programs to attract more capital.
The central bank, on February 24, decided to further cut the compulsory reserves for deposits to 3%, which will take effect as of March 1. The decision will help provide more usable capital to credit institutions.
Analysts believe that the credit disbursement will increase significantly in March for two reasons. First, the Vietnam Development Bank guarantees for small and medium enterprises, as well as cooperatives to get loans. Second, the decision on lower compulsory reserves will encourage banks to speed up disbursement.
VietNamNet, SGTT
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