Hanoi (VNA)- ꦡThe State Bank's expansion of credit room is considered good news for banks as they have more capital for production and business development.

Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) is allowed to loosen the purse strings and expand its credit room by 2.7% compared to the previous ceiling of 15% (equivalent to an additional amount of about 32,000 billion VND pumped into the economy). Thus, the bank’s new credit limit for the whole year is 17.7%. Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung - Deputy General Director in charge of the Executive Board of Vietcombank said that the bank will continue to increase credit for essential sectors and industries of the economy prioritized by the Government. Meanwhile, Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) is one of the private joint stock banks with the highest room rate, up to 4% and raising the total credit growth limit for the whole year to 11%. Thus, from now until the end of the year, Sacombank will have about VND 15,000 billion to lend. Han Ngoc Vu - General Director of the Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB) said that, along with focusing on lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, VIB also intends to increase consumer loans, which are used to buy houses or cars, and focus on credit card growth to stimulate people's spending needs. Meanwhile, Mr. Vu Thanh Trung - member of the Executive Board of Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB), said that with the room expansion of 3.2%, equivalent to an increase of 12,000 billion VND, the bank intends to allocate to production and business areas within the next one month. This is the sector with a huge demand for capital in recent times. According to a Vietnamplus reporter's findings, the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) has been granted an increase of credit limit of 3.5%, meaning that the bank will have an additional amount of about VND 50,000 billion to pump to the economy. In the group of private joint stock commercial banks, the granted credit room is generally around 3%. However, due to the small size of credit, the credit limit increased by just over VND 10,000 billion at large private banks. The figure for small joint stock commercial banks is only from 1,000 billion VND to 2,000 billion VND. In the group of banks that are not allowed to loosen the credit ceiling this time, the lending space is even more difficult. A director of Hanoi-based branch of a small-scale private bank said that his bank is not in the group 15 allowed expansion. The situation forced the branch to adjust its current loan portfolio, strengthen overdue debt collection and reduce outstanding loans with some large corporate customers with low interest rates to switch to personal loans with higher interest rates. Mr. Nguyen V.H., financial director of a company specializing in importing and exporting ceramics in Hai Duong province, said that on the morning of September 7, he was finally lent 24.5 billion VND after a waiting time of 2 months. "The disbursed capital only meets half of the loan in the contract. On the other hand, the loan interest rate increased to 9.2%/year, 0.7% higher than at the beginning of the year. Enterprises still have to borrow to import raw materials for production this year and next year," said Mr. Nguyen V.H. There are also some suggestions on whether it is possible to consider moving towards removing the credit ceiling to create opportunities for businesses to access capital. This issue has also been raised by experts at a variety of key meetings, but conflicting opinions remain./.