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Vietnam May Devalue Dong Twice in 2011, Credit Agricole Says
Vietnam’s dong is about 2 percent cheaper to buy in the black market than the rate banks pay and devaluations are likely in 2011 to bring the official exchange rate into line, according to Credit Agricole CIB.
The dong was trading at between 19,820 and 19,880 per dollar at money changers in Ho Chi Minh City this morning, according to a telephone information service run by state-owned Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications. The rate in the interbank market was 19,485 as of 9:35 a.m. in Hanoi. The Vietnamese central bank permits the currency to trade up to 3 percent on either side of its reference rate, currently set at 18,932.
Dollar liquidity has dried up because of the disparity between the official rate and market rate, forcing importers that need foreign exchange to buy euros instead, according to an Oct. 11 research note written by Dariusz Kowalczyk, a Hong Kong- based senior economist and strategist at Credit Agricole.
“The foreign-exchange market in Vietnam is distorted by all the regulations and by all the methods that companies are forced to use to circumvent them,” Kowalczyk said in a phone interview yesterday. “But the big picture point to make is that relatively soon after the last devaluation, the implied exchange rate is already 2 percent weaker than the official rate.”
Devaluations Coming
The last devaluation of 2 percent on Aug. 18 was “not large enough to balance the market,” Kowalczyk wrote in the note. The dong will probably be devalued by another 2 percent in February and by a further 3 percent in the northern hemisphere’s summer or autumn of 2011, bringing the official exchange rate to 20,500 per dollar, he wrote.
Vietnam’s inflation accelerated in September to 8.9 percent, the fastest in four months. The trade deficit widened to $1.05 billion in September from $395 million the previous month, according to preliminary General Statistics Office figures.
The currency’s weakness is being driven by Vietnam’s “large and persistent” trade deficit and by inflation, wrote Kowalczyk. The trade shortfall is putting “pressure on Vietnam’s balance of payments, requiring further devaluation in order to at least partially restore exports’ competitiveness,” he wrote.
businessweek
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