|
Forex rates expected to stay stable
The Vietnamese dong will not depreciate beyond VND21,000 to US$1 through the end of the year, National Financial Supervisory Committee vice chairman Le Xuan Nghia predicted at a seminar in Ha Noi last week.
Expecting only a slight depreciation of the dong against US dollar in the next few months, Nghia affirmed that a declining trade deficit and rising foreign currency reserves, would continue to stablise the foreign exchange market.
From July of last year through March of this year, the dong depreciated significantly against the dollar, creating tense circumstances on the foreign exchange market.
A possible shortage of US dollars might arise by the end of this year as many enterprises had borrowed from banks in US dollars in recent months and would need to gather dollars back in to repay the loans, Nghia warned. The disparity between banks' dollar supplies and outstanding loans stood at VND100 trillion (US$4.8 billion) at the end of July.
Whether gold prices would continue to skyrocket, as they have in recent months, was also a point of uncertainty, he said. A survey conducted by the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in 2003 showed that Vietnamese were hoarding up to 40 per cent of their assets in the form of gold.
A German expert at the seminar predicted that if the US economy continued to sputter, coupled with eurozone debt worries, gold might reach $2,500 per ounce.
Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Institute of Economics, suggested that investors look to a more stable currency, such as the Chinese yuan.
Despite the property market's current doldrums, seminar participants were also bullish on domestic real estate, predicting that if the Vietnamese economy showed signs of flourishing, property would remain the most lucrative investment.
However, senior economist Nguyen Tri Hieu suggested that real estate values might decline by as much as 30 per cent by the end of the fourth quarter, and he urged investors to sell real estate assets.
The seminar, entitled Viet Nam's Financial and Monetary Market – Challenges and Forecasts, was aimed at finding solutions for commercial banks and businesses to overcome difficulties arising from tight monetary policies, as well as helping individual investors choose the most lucrative investments among foreign currency, gold, real estate, securities and bank deposits.
The seminar also heard that remittance from abroad had fallen from $2.4 billion in the first quarter to $1.9 billion in the second.
vietnamnews
|
