Exchange rate cools down in some banks

HÀ NỘI — The US$/VNĐ exchange rate yesterday cooled down in some large commercial banks after the State Bank of Việt Nam (SBV) said it will intervene to stabilise the market if necessary, contributing to keeping the macro-economy steady.

SBV yesterday kept its daily reference exchange rate unchanged from the previous day at VNĐ22,635 per US dollar. With the current trading band of +/- 3 per cent, the ceiling rate applied to commercial banks during the day was VNĐ23,314 and the floor rate VNĐ21,956 per dollar.

Vietcombank yesterday listed the dollar at VNĐ23,000 for buying and VNĐ23,070 for selling, both down VNĐ5 against the previous day.The buying and selling rates at BIDV were also adjusted down by VNĐ10 to VNĐ23,010 and VNĐ23,080, respectively.

The US dollar has appreciated significantly against the Vietnamese đồng recently.

According to Phạm Thanh Hà, head of the SBV’s Monetary Policy Department, the recent appreciation of the dollar against the đồng was due to inside and outside impacts such as poor sessions on the domestic stock market and the dollar rising globally.

Commenting on the exchange rate and foreign currency market so far this year, Hà said both were stable in the first five months thanks to a trade surplus, high disbursement of foreign direct investment, big deals with high foreign indirect investment and the stable USD Index.Hà said the SBV would continue to monitor domestic and world markets with an eye on the impacts of rising US exchange rates, US-China relations, the European Central Bank and Japan’s central bank, as well as domestic foreign currency supply.

“If necessary, the SBV will sell foreign currency at a lower price to stabilise the market, contributing to keeping the macro-economy steady,” stated Hà.

Earlier, SBV Governor Lê Minh Hưng said at an online conference between the Government and localities held in Hà Nội on Monday that SBV’s net purchase of foreign currencies exceeded US$11 billion in the first half of 2018, increasing the nation’s foreign exchange reserves to approximately $63.5 billion.Hưng said the SBV had carried out a flexible currency policy to stabilise the average interest rate. The average lending interest rate was reduced by 0.5 percentage points over the January-June period.Meanwhile, credit grew approximately 6.9 per cent from 2017, with its structure occupied mainly by those lent to the processing-manufacturing sector (16.3 per cent) and rural agriculture (21 per cent), as well as small-and medium-sized businesses (nearly 7.1 per cent).Hưng stressed that the credit structure had been shifting towards supporting the development of special production areas like exports, rural farming and the processing-manufacturing industry.He added that over the past six months, the SBV had also sped up the handling of bad debt.He said a recent increase in the foreign exchange rate was predictable as the US Federal Reserve had raised the interest rates and the dollar had appreciated on the international market.Hưng stated that the SBV was willing to intervene in the local foreign exchange market if supply or demand problems arose. — VNS