Commercial banks are continuing to raise deposit interest rates in order to lure more capital to meet demands for loans which always increase towards the year end

Maritime Bank last week decided to raise the interest rates for both VND and US$ deposits, especially for short term one to three month deposits. The highest interest rate offered by the bank now is 10 percent per annum, just 0.5 percent per annum lower than the ceiling lending interest rate.

The highest interest rate applied to US$ deposits at the bank is 3.7 percent per annum. Meanwhile, the bonus interest rate of 0.1-0.2 percent was offered to female depositors on Vietnamese Women’s Day on October 20.

This is the third time within the last month that the bank has raised deposit interest rates.

Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) has launched a promotion programme applied to all clients who make VND, dollar, euro and gold deposits, worth 2.7 billion dong. Those clients, who deposit 10 million dong, $500 o Euro500 or 0.5 taels of gold will have the opportunity to get a Mercedes C200 K Elegance from a lucky draw.

Petrolimex Bank has announced new interest rates of between nine and 9.55 percent for 3-24 month term VND deposits. Meanwhile, the highest rate offered by the bank to US$ deposit is 3.4 percent.

Elsewhere the report by the State Bank of Vietnam showed that the interbank interest rates tend to increase slightly to 0.15-0.45 percent per annum, except the interest rate for 12 month term loan, which has seen the decrease of 0.15 percent last week over the week before.

The highest interbank interest rate now is 9.81 percent applied to 3 month term loan. The dollar interest rate also shows the growing tendency with the rates up by 0.08-0.45 percent per annum.

The Vietnam Banking Association (VNBA) has also confirmed that commercial banks are rushing to raise deposit interest rates of short term (less than six month) deposits, naming some banks, such as VP Bank, Ocean Bank, PG Bank and Military Bank.

Meanwhile, a Government report presented at the ongoing National Assembly’s session on October 20 said that the total outstanding loans in 2009 are expected to be ‘a little over 30 percent’. Meanwhile, the maximum credit growth rate set before for 2009 is 30 percent.

Analysts say that this should be understood that ‘over 30 percent’ would be okay and that the 30 percent cap is just a ‘plan’, not the ‘instruction’. This means that commercial banks still have more ‘room’ to push up lending.

Especially, the National Assembly’s Economics Committee has announced that the credit growth rate of the banking system in the fist nine months of the year is 29 percent, not 28 percent as estimated by the State Bank of Vietnam before.

The economics committee has said that credit has been growing very rapidly, which has led to the capital cost increase and higher production cost.

Rol.vn - Source: Vietnam Net