Commercial banks have well prepared for the business in the last months of the year, when the demand for capital is expected to increase sharply.
The credit growth rate in the first nine months has been described as “modest”, but the rate is expected to increase considerably in the fourth quarter of the year, when businesses have higher demand for capital to prepare for the production season.
Trinh Van Tuan, General Director of Orient Commercial Bank (OCB), said to date, the bank has just fulfilled a half of the credit plan set for 2010. Therefore, the bank is speeding up the capital mobilization in order to have more capital for lending. Tuan said OCB is now lending to businesses at ‘competitive’ lending interest rates, while it has also launched a programme on lending individual clients to fund their car purchases. Under the programme, clients can borrow money at the interest rate of 0.5 percent lower than the interest rate set for the disbursement moments.
Meanwhile, Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) is running the special credit programme under which the loans worth three trillion dong will be provided to businesses, including private businesses until the end of 2010. The clients borrowing capital under the programme can enjoy the special interest rates just equal to 80 percent of normal interest rates.
Besides, ACB is also providing loans through its ACB online system, under which the capital will be disbursed after one minute. Bui Tan Tai, Deputy General Director of ACB, said the interest rates applied for the programme is 0.4 percent lower than normal interest rate, or around 13 percent per annum.
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General Director of Sacombank Tran Xuan Huy said the demand for capital will surely increase towards the year end and it is now the big opportunity for banks to increase their outstanding loans and fulfill business plan. Therefore, Sacombank thinks that it needs to offer preferences to borrowers. The negotiable interest rates applied to business clients are hovering around 12.5-14 percent per annum.
In general, the lending interest rates offered by commercial banks at this moment prove to be more competitive. The clients in production sector now can borrow money at the interest rates of 13-14 percent per annum. Meanwhile, export companies, which are loyal clients of banks and have good relations with banks, can borrow at lower interest rates, from 12 to 12.5 percent per annum.
Meanwhile, the lending interest rates applied to non-production sector are between 15.1 and 17 percent per annum. Especially, the lending interest rates would be higher for consumer loans.
According to the State Bank of Vietnam, the outstanding loans had increased by nearly 20 percent over the last nine months, while the “quota” for the whole year is 25 percent.
The outstanding loans given to non-production sectors had reached 385 trillion dong. Of this amount, the loans given to the real estate sector had reached 218 trillion dong, while the loans to securities investments had climbed to 15 trillion dong. Especially, consumer loans had increased by 19.7 percent to 151 trillion dong.
Priority production sectors saw the high outstanding loans growth rate in the first nine months of the year. Agriculture, for example, witnessed the loans increasing by 19 percent, and small and medium enterprises by 20 percent.
