Broad-door for low-interest loans

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Deploying preferential loan packages with the companion of banks will help small and medium enterprises develop sustainably.

Diversified preferential loan packages

From April 1, Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB) deployed a 3,000 billion VND preferential loan package for small and medium enterprises operating in import and export and supply chain, with interest rates fluctuating 7% a year, is considered quite competitive in current joint stock commercial banks. In addition to good interest rates, customers also experience incentives on banking service fees in international payments, guarantees and other payment and money transfer services. It is expected that this loan package will be disbursed from April 1 to June 30 with a preferential period of up to 12 months.

Ban Viet Bank also spent 1,000 billion VND for small and medium-sized enterprises with preferential loans with an interest rate of 8.5% a year, applied from now until December 31st. In addition to providing preferential interest loans, during this time, customers who activate e-banking services at Ban Viet Bank are also entitled to free bill payment and cash flow management services free of charge in and out and to print statements for free for three months. Besides, when transferring money in VND via other banks, enterprises will save transfer costs with the current transfer fee of 8,000 VND per item.

HDBank also spent 10,000 billionVND for flexible loans for individual customers and micro-enterprise customers in the credit package "Loans to pay money" from now to June 30. Customers participating in the package have many options for interest rates and flexible time, such as the interest rate for the first period is only 8.5%, the period of fixed interest rate for the period loans up to 12 months. Those taking real estate loans, production, business, agricultural production and buying cars with collateral can join this loan package. In addition, when participating in the credit package of "Loans to pay money", customers can open credit cards with a maximum limit of up to 500 millionVND and other banking products developed by HDBank.

Previously, HDBank also implemented a preferential loan package "Business fast loans - Rapid increase in income" with interest rates of only 6.3% per year. Participating in this package, customers were granted a credit card of up to 300 million VND.

Mutually beneficial

According to the General Statistics Office, in 2018, the whole country had 131,300 new registered enterprises. But Vietnamese enterprises are mainly small and medium scale, so they face many risks. According to the report of Rong Viet Securities Company, up to 80% of newly established enterprises cannot survive more than three years. The main problem is capital. A survey by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) shows that up to 70% of small and medium enterprises have not accessed credit capital. In particular, nearly a third cannot access the bank's capital and a third of enterprises have difficulty accessing bank capital. The reasons mentioned for this include the small businesses’ lack of collateral for loans, a lack of capital needs an having accounting and financial systems not as good as large enterprises. Moreover, many banks have not been interested in the segment of small and medium enterprises.

However, this story is gradually changing as many banks now consider small and medium enterprises as key customers. According to experts, bank's lending to this group of businesses will bring benefits to both sides, enterprises can easily access capital to expand their business, while the bank has more stable sources of income.

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According to statistics, only about 21% of small and medium enterprises in Vietnam are connected with global supply chains, while in some countries in ASEAN, this rate is much higher, typically in Thailand is over 30% and in Malaysia is 46%. The actual demand for working capital of enterprises in the field of import and export and supply chain is very large and the promotion of funding for small and medium enterprises of Vietnam will bring many economic benefits. In fact, increasing the value of global supply chains, especially in the context of an increasingly globalised financial market, supply-based transactions are constantly expanding. Therefore, Nguyen Dinh Tung, General Director of OCB Bank, assessed that providing capital for small and medium enterprises according to the value chain is a solution to improve the capacity of enterprises to expand in the modern direction to continue toenter deeper into the global economic system.

According to Tung, in lending activities of banks, the risk is not only in small and medium enterprises but also from all customers. However, the risk "taste" in each customer segment will be different. With small and medium enterprises, the risk will be dispersed, so bad debt will also be dispersed. In fact, with small and medium enterprises, credit supply has certain difficulties, but if the bank learns, analyses and accompanies them, these businesses will grow and become stronger.