Banks increased interest rates on 6-12 month term deposits to an average of 7.8%, while lending interest rates remained at 10.5%, ending a long series of increases since the end of last year.
According to data released by the State Bank today, the average deposit interest rate in July inched up for all terms, except less than one month. Compared to the beginning of the year, deposit interest rates increased by about 1.5 percentage points.
For short terms of 6-12 months, the highest interest rate is 7.8% per year, an increase of 0.2 percentage points and an increase of 10 consecutive months. Long-term deposits over 24 months pay interest up to 7.9% per year.
As noted by VnExpress, some private banks such as NCB, MBV, Vikki... actually apply interest rates of 8.5-9.2% for 6-month terms. The negotiable interest rate is even higher, up to 9.5%, depending on many factors such as deposit amount, term and ability to negotiate with bank staff.
The director of corporate customers at a private bank said that interest rates are continuously raised, causing customers to shift their cash flow to places with higher payments, forcing the bank to both find new sources of money and increase incentives to retain old customers.
While the mobilization race has not cooled down, lending interest rates have changed positively, stagnating at 10.5% per year, according to statistics from the State Bank. Previously, the average disbursement interest rate continuously escalated from 8.9% at the end of last year to the current level.
Short-term loan interest rates for priority areas such as export, agriculture, supporting industries, small and medium enterprises, high technology applications... maintain 3.9% per year. This level is close to the prescribed short-term loan interest rate ceiling of 4%.
In the Big4 group, loans are disbursed with an average interest rate of 6.1-8.5% per year. Private banks such as HDBank, SeABank, ACB apply 9.28-10.4% for medium and long-term loans.
At a working session with the State Bank and credit institutions last week, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung asked banks to reduce costs, stabilize interest rates and substantially reduce loan interest rates, thereby sharing with people and businesses.
Some parties such as Agribank, SHB, Sacombank, LPBank, BVBank... have announced preferential credit packages with interest rates 1-2% lower than normal loans.
According to Mr. Le Anh Tuan, General Director of Dragon Capital, in the context of large credit demand combined with the increasingly wide gap between lending and mobilization, the scenario of a sudden sharp adjustment of interest rates is unlikely, but there is a high possibility that it will decrease slowly.
Mr. Tuan also forecasts that deposit interest rates in the coming time will be "difficult to reach new high levels" because the State Bank has many moves to support liquidity. Specifically, this agency injected money directly through open market operations (OMO), sometimes more than 18.6 billion USD. This is the operator buying back valuable papers from commercial banks to regulate liquidity and stabilize interbank market interest rates. The operator also trades foreign currency swaps (FX swap) to supply the system with about 3 billion USD.
In addition, the State Bank also has many indirect measures such as loosening the calculation of the ratio of outstanding loans to total deposits (LDR), increasing the ratio of short-term capital for medium and long-term loans and directing to cool down interest rates.
