According to Dinh Quang Hieu, Director of the State Bank’s Quang Binh-based office, bad debts in the locality fell to 277 billion VND (nearly 13.2 million USD), accounting for only 1.5 percent of the total outstanding loan, far lower than the national average of 4.6 percent.

Local banks have rescheduled loans for more than 1,000 businesses and 25,000 households with a total amount of nearly five trillion VND, equivalent to 35 percent of all outstanding loans, he noted.

Besides continuous cuts to interest rates, the banks have created best conditions for their clients to access capital resources to develop production and create jobs, while offering interest remission totalling 30 billion VND to poor clients that have been impacted by natural disasters, said Hieu.

Currently, the lending interest rate applied by local banks to prioritised sectors of agriculture and rural development, small and medium-sized enterprises, export, support industry, high-tech firms is just eight percent per annum.

Over the last 11 months, more than 200 firms and 2,500 households in Quang Binh were provided with new loans totalling nearly one trillion VND to boost their economic development.

Recently, local banks have sped up capital mobilisation efforts with over 15.8 trillion VND mobilised in the first 11 months of 2013, up 12.5 percent over the beginning of this year’s figure

Source: VNA