The
US dollar prices on the free market and at banks showed signs of cooling down
last week. Currently, the US dollar sale price at foreign exchange shops near
Ben Thanh market, HCM City is ranging around 21,200 dong each, down over 200
dong each from the previous week.
According to a foreign currency trader in Phan
Chu Trinh Street, district 1, HCM City, in recent days the demand for US dollar
at shops around Ben Thanh market area has reduced and the number of US dollar
buyers was not high. Meanwhile, shops have also bought additional US dollar
from foreigners coming to Vietnam and Overseas Vietnamese returning home for
Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday. The oversupply against the demand has helped cool
down the forex market.
However, foreign exchange operations of gold
shops around the area were carried out in a very secret place, most stores only
sell US dollar to familiar people for the fear of being fined and confiscated
in accordance with the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s regulation, a gold shop
owner in this area said.
On January 6, 2012, the central bank decided
to punish two illegal foreign currency trading shops in Hanoi with the penalty
of up to 100 million dong, much higher than the amount of foreign currency
seized in each shop (only a few hundreds of US dollar).
Previously, on October 20, 2011, the
Vietnamese government issued a Decree No 95/ND-CP on sanctioning of
administrative violations in the monetary sector and banking operations. Of
which, unlawful foreign currency trading activities may be fined up to 500
million dong and at the same time will be confiscated the mount of foreign
currency at that transaction.
Meanwhile, according to a staff of Saigon
Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank-STB), the bank’s US dollar
source is in surplus thanks to US dollar sources from exporters and overseas
Vietnamese while the US dollar buying demand has not increased as most
enterprises have made pre-preparations of foreign currency for imports of goods
and many have stopped imports of goods due to close to the Lunar New Year.
Presently, if a business needs US dollar, it is easy in buying foreign currency
in bank, unlike the time in October 2011, many enterprises had found it very
hard to access banks’ foreign currency sources or had to buy US dollar at
excessively high price of exceeding 21,700 dong each.
Currently, the bank’s US dollar buying price
is higher than the quoted price by 4 dong, at 21,030 dong each and the US
dollar selling price for enterprises is higher negligibly, at about 21,060 dong
each (listed price is 21,036 dong/US dollar), about 300 dong/US dollar lower
than the forex rate in late December 2011. According to Sacombank’s staff, in
the last two days of last weekend, the US dollar price declined up to 100 dong
per day.
The interbank average forex rate on January
15, 2012 still remained unchanged at 20,828 dong/US dollar. For the whole year
2011, the forex rate increased over 10%, of which the biggest devaluation of
Vietnamese dong was on February 11 whereby the forex rate was adjusted up 9.3%
against the level of 18,932 dong that had been remained unchanged for seven
months previously.
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