By Truong Nam - The Saigon Times Daily
HANOI – The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) is ready to submit to the Government a scheme on mobilizing gold from citizens to prevent speculation, stabilize the market, regulate local prices and facilitate the economic development.
This was given by Governor Nguyen Van Binh in an interview with Vietnam News Agency on the central bank’s website on Monday.
According to SBV’s assessment, citizens possess a large amount of some 300-500 tons of gold.
“If we fail to mobilize this source of gold to serve the socio-economic development, the country would be unable to grow strongly. The gold market management must guarantee the benefits of gold depositors as well as ensure the mobilized capital source to be used for socio-economic development, especially in the current hard time,” said Binh.
Under the gold mobilization scheme, the State will take charge of mobilizing gold from citizens with the credit institutions as intermediaries. In this way, the central authority will not directly intervene in the market.
Meanwhile, though various tools like gold account trading on the world market, the country will insure risks of global gold price volatility, thus guarantee the assets of citizens. The State can also exchange mobilized gold for foreign currencies to serve the socio-economic development.
In the interview, Binh also pinned high hope on the possibility of bringing down the interest rate.
The governor said there have been conditions to pull down interest rates. In particular, since August 2011, the nation’s consumer price index (CPI) growth has always been under 1% a month, raising hope about lower inflation rate in the coming time.
In addition, SBV is now focusing on solving the liquidation issue of the banks. If the situation is well remedied, deposit rate cut within this year will be more likely.
“The Government aims to restrict inflation at a single-digit rate in 2012, specifically at 9-9.5%. Several international organizations said if Vietnam continued to take drastic measures like those in 2011, the country’s inflation would be 8-8.5% this year. If such target is achieved by the year’s end, the banking system will possibly revise down deposit rates to 10% a year,” said the governor.
As for the forex rates, he said if there was no major upheaval from external factors, the forex market could be kept stable and Vietnam dong would be devalued by some 2-3% in 2012 only.
However, Governor Binh admitted 2012 would be another tough year for the banking system given the general economic woes and the shortcomings of the system itself.