The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) on Thursday called a meeting with commercial banks’ representatives to ask other lenders to provide ACB with much-needed liquidity support and give updates about the monetary market situation.
Nguyen Huu Nghia, head of the banking inspection and supervision department at SBV, said: “SBV is closely monitoring the monetary market developments and those at ACB. Banks have committed to back ACB to meet demands of those individual and institutional depositors wishing to withdraw money.”
Toai told Saigon Times: “We have mapped out a contingency plan in which we will ask the State Bank of Vietnam to refinance us in case of need. Now, ACB does not need to be refinanced by the central bank.”
ACB’s available cash and other liquid assets are estimated at around 30 trillion dong, he said, adding there is no worry about a liquidity shortfall.
He added the combined amount of cash withdrawn on Thursday was lower than the day before. Around 5 trillion dong was withdrawn from the bank on Wednesday.
SBV on Thursday injected a total of 15 trillion dong into open market operations (OMO) and over 3.6 trillion dong came to the bid winning banks. ACB was not one of them.
“We have not received money from the open market today as we got 7 trillion dong on Thursday,” said Toai.
After many efforts of SBV and ACB to disclose information on Wednesday, when the number of people withdrawing their money from ACB stayed high following prominent businessman Nguyen Duc Kien’s arrest, OMO and the inter-bank market became less tense on Thursday.
In the inter-bank market, demand picked up while supply plunged, contrary to the situation in the previous weeks. Vietnam dong interest rates increased by 50-100 basis points, hovering around 7.5-8% per year for overnight to one-week terms, 8-8.5% for 2-3 week terms and 9-9.5% for one-month terms.
The total volume of OMO credit was above 3.6 trillion dong with an interest rate of 8% per annum for seven-day terms, down sharply from 13 trillion dong on the preceding day.
On Wednesday, banks restricted supplying money in the inter-bank market and the central bank pumped the largest amount of money since late January to ensure liquidity for ACB and other institutions. However, the situation changed for the better on Thursday.-- Saigon Times