HCM City (VNA) - Promoting consumer finance andsimplifying procedures for loan applications would be a priority for commercialbanks, financial companies and microfinance institutions as part ofefforts to limit black credit, a conference heard in Ho Chi Minh City on January20.

Deputy Governor of the State Bankof Vietnam (SBV) Dao Minh Tu considered abolishing black credit as one of theimportant tasks that has been continuously implemented across the wholecredit institution system in Vietnam.

In recent years, the SBV andcredit institutions in localities have been cocoordinating with the Ministry ofPublic Security and local authorities in implementing drastic measures to limitblack credit.

In the future, the SBV willcontinue improving the awareness of local people about credit policies, loanpackages and procedures for loan applications so that local people could easilyaccess bank loans.

Meanwhile, the State Bank willstudy and soon complete legal documents to deploy mobile money service in Vietnamwhile making loans from microfinance institutions easily accessible to local people,then gradually limit black credit.

With a network of branches andtransaction offices that have spread all over the country, the SBV hasinstructed credit institutions to diversify banking products and services,reduce interest rates and simplify lending procedures in order to facilitatepeople’s access to credit packages through official channels, said Ha ThuGiang, Deputy Director of the SBV’s Department of Credit forEconomic Sectors.

By the end of last year, thescale of Vietnam’s consumer finance market came to around 1.8 quadrillion VND (over77.25 billion USD), accounting for over 20 percent of outstanding loans in theeconomy, up 7.4 percent compared to the end of 2019.

Pham Toan Vuong, Deputy GeneralDirector of the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank),said his bank’s outstanding loans to individual customers have continued togrow over past years, adding that in 2020, individual customers accessed nearly840 trillion VND worth of loans, a year-on-year increase of more than 7 percent.

According to Nguyen Thanh Phuc,Deputy General Director of FE Credit, said the company currently has about15 million customers, with new loan balance from 4.5-7 trillion VND each month.

FE Credit - Vietnam’s No1consumer finance company - holds more than 50 percent market share in itsfield and its customers are those who cannot borrow from banks. Thatmeans the demand for consumer loans remains large, he said./.