Banks help businesses affected by the disease

	Banks serve as fulcrum for businesses amid epidemic
	Banks support customers affected by COVID-19

TPBank plans to consider rescheduling payments for about 200 customers with a loan balance of VND1,500 billion. Photo: ST.

Debt rescheduling, interest rate reduction

The current Covid-19 epidemic is still complicated and unpredictable, while the impact of the epidemic on the domestic and foreign economy increases exponentially. Therefore, businesses are suffering many influences.Some businesses having to stop operating, especially small and medium enterprises.

According to a survey of the Private Economic Development Research Board (Board IV, under the Advisory Committee on Reforming the Administrative Procedures of the Prime Minister), nearly 74 percent of enterprises said that they are in danger of bankruptcy if the disease lasts six months due to not beingable to cover operating costs, salary for employees, interest payments on bank loans, rental costs.

Understanding the difficulties of enterprises, commercial banks have complied with the direction of the State Bank, focusing on postponement, extension, restructuring of repayment terms, reducing interest rates, reducing fees for businesses, continued new lending procedures to create favorable conditions for businesses to overcome difficulties.

Mr. Nguyen Hung, General Director of Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank) said that before the issuance of Circular 01 of the State Bank, TP Bank actively considered the list of customers to take specific measures ofsupport. TP Bank found that, in the customer portfolio, about 20 percent of customers wereseriously affected, 40 percent of customers were relatively affected, and 40 percent of other customers were less affected. Therefore, from the effective date of Circular 01, TP Bank expects in March to consider rescheduling about 200 customers with outstanding loans of VND1,500 billion. According to this TPBank calculation, the total outstanding loans of customers are about VND20-30 trillion.

Also talking about the bank's support, Mr. Tu Tien Phat, Deputy General Director of Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB), said that under the direction of the State Bank of Vietnam, ACB received customer requests and preliminary statistics showing that ACB has received 392 customer requests with total outstanding loans of over VND4,000 billion. The number of such customers is relatively large. Regarding new loans, in January, ACB announced a VND25,000 billion loan package, with an interest rate of 1-2 percent / year. By the end of February, the bank representative said it has disbursed to 21,900 customers with more than VND20,000 billion, pledging to expand this package after it is used up. For customers who are severely and directly affected by the disease, ACB also provides a VND5,000 billion credit package with a loan term of up to 12 months.

Deputy General Director of Saigon - Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), Ms. NinhThi Lan Phuong, also saidthat as soon as the epidemic happened, SHB had some solutions such as: reducing the fee for remittance services from 30-50 percent, for depositors online, plus interest rate 0.4-0.5 percent, for customers who save money and personal loans, they will give Covid-19 insurance package. SHB has also reviewed the activities of businesses affected by Covid-19 to provide appropriate support packages.

Banks suffer hardship

It can be seen that, asthe "backbone" of the economy, the banking industry has been playing a "support" role, helping businesses to overcome difficulties and seek opportunities. However, in order to do this, banks must also strive to implement solutions, as well as seeking mechanisms to implement them appropriately, ensuring operational safety and supporting enterprises obtaining efficiency.

According to Ms. Pham Thi Trung Ha, Deputy General Director of Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB Bank), the current major problem is the evaluation criteria, because customers are not only affected by Covid-19 but also affected by many other factors. According to this position, if focusing on re-evaluating all customers, it will take a long time, so MB Bank agreed on the whole system, only evaluating criteria related to income and revenue impacted byCovid-19. Accordingly, MB Bank has evaluated the level of customer influence since the beginning of March 2020. Initially, about VND1,000 billion has been reduced by 1% compared to the current interest rate.

Not only difficulty on the evaluation criteria, but TP Bank's leader said that the bank faced difficulty with the number of documents submitted by the units to consider, because the debt structure assessment still had to be done fully under the SBV's regulations. Therefore, the next problem is the resources to deploy these jobs.

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It can be seen that commercial banks have been implementing in the spirit of willingness to share profits with enterprises. In the future, all banks said that they would closely monitor the disease situation, continue to implement drastically, proactively and effectively solutions to prevent and control epidemics; grasp customers' business operations in order to promptly apply supportive measures.