"Midwife" of enterprises affected by the disease

	Banks help businesses affected by the disease
	Currency in the "whirlpool" of disease

TPBank plans to consider debt rescheduling for about 200 customers with loans of VND1,500 billion. Photo: collected.

Debt rescheduling and interest rate reduction

The current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic is still complicated and unpredictable ending, while the impact of the pandemic on the domestic and foreign economy increases exponentially. Therefore, enterprises are suffering a lot of influences; even some enterprises have to stop operating, notably small and medium enterprises.

According to a survey of the Private Economic Development Research Board (Board IV, under the Advisory Committee on Reforming the Administrative Procedures of the Prime Minister), nearly 74% of enterprises said that they are in danger of bankruptcy if the disease lasts for six month because revenue is unable to cover operating costs, salary for employees, interest payments on bank loans and ground rental costs.

Because of understanding difficulties of enterprises, commercial banks have complied with the direction of the State Bank, focusing on postponement, extension, restructuring of repayment term, reducing interest rates, reducing fees for enterprises and continuing new lending procedures to create favourable conditions for enterprises to overcome difficulties.

In this regard, Nguyen Hung, General Director of TienPhong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank), said that before the issuance of Circular 01 of the State Bank, TPBank considered the list of customers to take measures to support customers. TPBank found that in the customer portfolio, about 20% of customers were seriously affected, 40% of customers were relatively affected, while 40% of other customers were less affected. Therefore, from the effective date of Circular 01, TPBank expected to consider rescheduling about 200 customers with outstanding loans of VND1,500 billion in March. According to this TPBank calculation, the total outstanding loans of customers would be about VND20-30 trillion.

Also talking about the bank's support, Tu Tien Phat, Deputy General Director of Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB), said under the direction of the State Bank of Vietnam, ACB received customer requests, preliminary statistics showed ACB had received 392 customer requests with a total outstanding loan of more than VND4,000 billion. The number of such customers is relatively large. Regarding new loans, in January, ACB announced a loan package of VND25,000 billion, with an interest rate of 1-2% per year. By the end of February, the bank’s representative said it had disbursed to 21,900 customers with more than VND20,000 billion, pledging to expand this package after it would be used up. For customers who are severely and directly affected by the disease, ACB also provided a credit package of VND5,000 billion with a loan term of up to a year.

Deputy General Director of Saigon - Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), Ninh Thi Lan Phuong also shared that for the pandemic, SHB had some solutions such as: Reducing fees for remittance services from 30- 50%, for depositors online, interest rate was plus 0.4-0.5%, for customers who save money and personal loans, they will give a Covid-19 insurance package. SHB also reviewed the business activities of enterprises affected by Covid-19 to provide appropriate support packages.

Banks suffer "hard"

As the "backbone" of the economy, the banking industry has been playing a "support" role of the economy, helping enterprises overcome difficulties and seek opportunities. However, to do this, banks must also strive to implement solutions, as well as seek mechanisms to implement them appropriately, ensuring operational safety and supporting enterprises' efficiency.

According to Pham Thi Trung Ha, Deputy General Director of Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MBBank), the current major problem is the evaluation criteria, because customers are not only affected by Covid 19 but also many other factors. According to her, if focusing on re-evaluating all customers, it would take a long time so MBBank agreed for the whole system to only evaluate criteria related to income and revenue impact after Covid-19. Accordingly, MBBank evaluated the level of customer influence since the beginning of March 2020. Initially, about VND1,000 billion had been reduced by 1% interest compared to the current interest rate.

Not difficult on the evaluation criteria, but TPBank's leader said the bank had "struggled" with the number of documents submitted to consider, because the debt structure assessment still had to be done in all stages under the SBV's regulations. Therefore, the next problem was resources to deploy these jobs.

Commercial banks have been implementing in the spirit of willingness to share profits with enterprises. In the future, all banks said they would closely monitor the disease situation, continue to implement drastically, proactively and effectively solutions to prevent and control pandemics; grasp customers' business operations to promptly apply supportive measures.