According to information provided by the Standing Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Dao Minh Tu at a press conference on the results of banking activities in the third quarter of 2024 held by the State Bank of Vietnam on the afternoon of October 17 in Hanoi, although a number of provinces and cities suffered heavy damage from Typhoon Yagi, credit growth has so far reached 9%. The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) continues to operate flexible policies, ensuring favorable conditions for economic development.

According to the Deputy Governor, the SBV has proposed many solutions, monetary policies, and credit programs to be implemented synchronously and drastically, ensuring adequate capital supply for the economy and promoting economic growth. In particular, to facilitate credit institutions to supply credit capital to the economy, on December 31, 2023, the SBV assigned all credit growth targets for 2024 to credit institutions and publicized the principles for credit institutions to proactively implement.

"To date, credit growth of the whole system has reached about 9% compared to the end of 2023. Liquidity is good and there is still much room for credit growth. Credit institutions currently have favorable conditions to provide loans to the economy," said the Deputy Governor.

According to the State Bank's leaders, outstanding loans have reached VND 14.7 million billion and mobilized capital at about VND 14.5 million billion. The credit package for forestry and fisheries has been increased to VND 60,000 billion and will continue to be expanded if it is fully disbursed and effective. With the VND 140,000 billion package for social housing, the interest rate is being submitted to the Prime Minister for a further 1% reduction.

In managing gold trading activities, with the attention and direction of the Government, the synchronous solutions of the State Bank and the coordination of relevant ministries and branches, to date, the preliminary goal of handling and controlling the price difference between SJC gold bars and world gold prices within a suitable range has been achieved.

However, the amount of outstanding loans of credit institutions affected by Yagi typhoon is about VND 165,000 billion. This would be one of the reasons why bad debts are expected to increase in the upcoming period.

Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu noted that the issue of bad debt is being focused on for handling and controlling in the context of economic and business difficulties, affecting the debt repayment ability of enterprises.

Regarding non-cash payment and digital banking activities, information from the State Bank of Vietnam shows that many of Vietnam's top digitally transformed banks have now achieved the rate of 90% of customer transactions conducted on digital channels. To date, more than 87% of Vietnamese adults have payment accounts at banks.

Regarding the banking tasks in the last months of the year, Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu said that the most important goal is still to maintain an open monetary policy to support stable interest rates and exchange rates for the economy and business development.

Kylie Nguyen