On March 28, 2018, at the headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong had a meeting with the delegation from the US-ASEAN Business Council.
Also attending the meeting were representatives of the SBV’s International Cooperation Department, the Banking Supervision Agency, the Monetary Policy Department, the Forex Management Department, the Payment Department and the IT Department. On the US side, there was Mr. Alexander Feldman, President & CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council – Head of Delegation, accompanied by a representative of the US Embassy in Vietnam and a group of senior executives from US companies like 3M, AES, Amazon, Apple, Bay Global Strategies, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Mastercard, Paypal, Qualcomm, Time Warner, Visa, etc.
On behalf of the SBV Board of Management, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong welcomed the Delegation to visit and work with the SBV. She highly appreciated the cooperation of the US-ASEAN Business Council with Vietnam’s ministries and agencies. In continuation, she expressed her hope that the US-ASEAN Business Council would continue to strengthen its role as a bridge to promote further cooperative relationships between the US and Vietnam in general and between the US-ASEAN Business Council and Vietnam’s government ministries and agencies (including the SBV) in particular.
Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong speaks at the meeting
Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong went on by briefing the guests on the results of the SBV’s monetary policy management and banking performance in 2017 and in the first months of 2018. Accordingly, the monetary policy management has been proactive, flexible with the core inflation kept at 1.41%. The lending interest rates are reduced by 0.5 to 1% per annum. The credit growth has been reasonable with the main focus on production and business, especially the key economic sectors in line with the directions of the Government. The exchange rates, the foreign currency market and the gold market have been operating stably, meeting the demand for foreign currencies of the economy and providing effective support for exports. Vietnam’s foreign currency reserves have reached a new record high of over USD 53 billion. In 2017, the banking sector focused its resources drastically on the second phase of the Restructuring and Handling of the Non-Performing Loans (NPL) Plan, and has achieved many important initial results. In particular, the Government’s approval for the Scheme for “Restructuring the credit institutions system in combination with the settlement of bad debts in the period of 2016-2020” (Decision No. 1058), and the National Assembly’s passage of Resolution No. 42 on a pilot scheme for the settlement of bad debts, and the Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Law on Credit Institutions, have provided the foundation and an important impetus for the acceleration of the restructuring process in combination with settling bad debts.
About the tasks of the banking sector in 2018, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong shared that the SBV would continue to manage the monetary policy in a proactive, flexible and prudent manner, in close collaboration with the fiscal policy and other macro policies in order to control the inflation, stabilize the monetary and financial system and the country’s macro-economy, thereby contributing to the economic growth at a reasonable level, ensuring the liquidity of the credit institutions and stabilizing the money and forex market…
The US-ASEAN Business Council’s President & CEO, Mr. Alexander Feldman thanked SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong for taking the time to meet the Delegation. He said that the US-ASEAN Business Council and its member companies highly value Vietnam’s achievements in 2017 regarding the economic growth, the monetary policy management, the competitiveness improvement and the big successes of APEC Vietnam 2017. He also congratulated the SBV on its successes in managing the monetary policy in 2017.
The US-ASEAN Business Council at the meeting
At the meeting, the two sides exchanged their views about the following substances: (i) The processes of restructuring and strengthening the credit institution system in Vietnam, handling with bad debts, ensuring the interest rates stability and stabilizing the exchange rates; (ii) Challenges in the implementation of Circular No.19/2016/TT-NHNN on banking card transactions related to the national payment gateway, and the feedbacks from the Government authorities to the industry enquiries; (iii) Regulations on the management and use of cloud computing services in the banking sector, and the principles of ensuring free circulation of data across borders.
Le Hang