International monetary fund

International lenders signing the credit facility to support VietinBank Securities

VietinBank securities has received additional funding support with the recent signing of $60 million of syndicated loans, following a $30 million facility just a month ago.

On April 15, a consortium of major international lenders operating in Vietnam – Woori Bank Vietnam (Bac Ninh Branch), Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Vietnam, and Cathay United Bank Vietnam – has inked an agreement to facilitate $60 million for the additional financial needs of VietinBank Securities.

In particular, Woori Bank Vietnam (Bac Ninh Branch) specifically provided $50 million, while Taipei Fubon and Cathay United provided $10 million altogether.

Last month, a group of four Taiwanese lenders – the Union Bank of Taiwan, Taichung Commercial Bank Co., Ltd.’s Labuan branch, Taishin International Bank, and Huanan Commercial Bank – also rolled out a $30 million syndicated loan with a 12-month tenure for VietinBank Securities.

“We firmly believe that $90 million of high-profile syndicated loans would bring about more additional capacity for us to increase our foothold in Vietnam’s equity market and access to more potential customers,” noted Ho Thi Thu Hien, chairwoman of the board at VietinBank Securities.

On the same note, Lee Myoung Ho, Woori Bank Vietnam (Bac Ninh Branch) director and chief representative, applauded the brokerage’s vast potential and how the syndicated loans could pave the way for the company to bolsters its strength thanks to the competitive capital.

“Woori Bank is one of the largest South Korean banks with extensive years of experience in providing top-notch financial services. With our vast experience, we believe in VietinBank Securities’ strong standing and impressive performance in the past year,” he told VIR .

The deal is envisaged to lay concrete foundations for the company to boost its activities related to international loan advisory and financing arrangements.

At the signing ceremony, VietinBank Securities also connected businesses in various areas, such as Novaland Group, Minh Phu Seafood Group, Viet Hung Industrial Investment JSC, Louis Agro Group JSC, and other enterprises.

As one of the eldest, most experienced seven brokerage companies in the country, VietinBank Securities – as a part of state-owned lender VietinBank – has a proven customer-centric approach, with a wide range of tailored financial services such as underwriting-capital raising, mergers and acquisitions advisory, and asset management, to name a few.

Exports for the year as of March 15 were worth US$62.01 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22.7 per cent, according to the General Department of Viet Nam Customs.

Exports to the US in the first two months of the year accounted for $13.83 billion or 28.4 per cent of total exports.

In recent years the US has become Viet Nam’s biggest market. Last year, for instance, at $76.4 billion it accounted for 27 per cent of the latter’s total exports.

Than Duc Viet, general director of Garment 10 Joint Stock Company, said there were several factors behind Viet Nam’s rapid growth in exports including to the US.

Primarily, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic has gradually been controlled around the world, especially after several countries started vaccinating their populations, enabling many of them to reopen their borders and trade to resume.

Businesses in the country, hit badly for the last year or so by the pandemic, are making strenuous efforts to bounce back, he pointed out.

Many countries around the world have rolled out large stimulus packages to spend their way out of the economic slump, and this has revived trade, he added.

Many analysts concurred with these views, saying the US recently launched a $1.9 trillion package to make direct payments of $1,400 to individuals earning up to $75,000 a year starting in April.

This is the third and largest stimulus since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

Viet Nam, one of the US’s major exporters, supplying essential items like fisheries products and garments and electronics, is expected to benefit from this relief package.

Viet of Garment 10 told Dau Tu Chung Khoan magazine that Vietnamese exporters hope to get orders from the US.

Americans are known as big spenders, and if they get the money from the Government consumption would surely rise, he said.

His own company’s exports to the US saw relatively high growth in the first quarter and are expected to grow further due to the huge new stimulus package.

Bui Viet Quang, general director of Red River Garment Joint Stock Company, said his company had enough export orders for until August this year, 80 per cent from the US.

“The US’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package will surely affect enterprises that export to the market. We expect to see robust growth [in US export orders] in the fourth quarter.”

Analysts said a recovery in the US economy would help Vietnamese exporters, especially those in the textile and garment industry.

However, analysts also sounded a warning saying while the US stimulus packages would benefit Viet Nam’s exporters in the short term, loose monetary policies could cause high inflation, which would increase their costs whereas they would not be able to increase prices immediately, affecting their margins.

Besides, the inflation would also hurt demand, they added.

Why property companies want to own banks

Nguyen Tuan Anh, director of the State Bank of Viet Nam’s department of credit for economic sectors, said growth in bank lending to the property sector in 2020 was 9.97 per cent, lower than the overall credit growth rate of 12.13 per cent.

This is becoming an emerging trend.

Enterprises in the sector have found it difficult to borrow from banks after the central bank issued a circular in 2019 prescribing limits and prudential ratios for banks.

It reduced the use of short-term deposits for medium- and long-term loans from 40 per cent to 37 per cent from October 2021 and to 30 per cent from October 2022.

This was aimed at controlling credit to high-risk sectors like real estate.

In the event, the only option real estate companies have is to themselves acquire stakes in banks.

They also target owning a piece of securities firms since that would enable them to mobilise capital from the market by issuing stocks and bonds.

Thus, Tran Thi Thu Hang, the CEO of Sunshine group, became vice chairwoman of the Kien Long Joint Stock Commercial Bank in 2018 and chairwoman of KS Joint Stock Company (KS Securities) around the same time, indicating that Sunshine or related parties had become major shareholders in the two.

Analysts said the finance and property sectors always have a symbiotic relationship since the latter is highly capital intensive with slow returns.

Thus, Vingroup has tied up with Techcombank, MIKGroup with VPBank, Dat Xanh Group with Viet A Bank, and TNR Holdings Viet Nam with MSB.

While the Government’s efforts to control lending to the property sector have had some effect, banks remain an important source of funding for real estate development projects.

This trend is expected continue in future, analysts said. VNS

Chubb Life Vietnam always stands ready to provide timely and practical support to the community

Since opening its first office in the country in 2005, Chubb Life Vietnam has focused on creating a positive impact and sustainable development for the communities in which it operates. The company now employs over 40,000 employees and agents, in over 140 offices across Vietnam and makes an important contribution to the development of the country’s education system.

To date, Chubb Life Vietnam and the Chubb Charitable Foundation have contributed over VND30 billion ($1.3 million) to the construction of nine new schools in Central Vietnam. The company has also funded new educational equipment to schools and awarded scholarships to support thousands of underprivileged students in their schooling.

To date, Chubb Life Vietnam and the Chubb Charitable Foundation have contributed over VND30 billion ($1.3 million) to the construction of nine new schools in Central Vietnam.

“We are proud to receive the Certificate of Merit from the Minister of Education and Training of Vietnam as part of our continuous effort to support the communities we live and work in,” said Lam Hai Tuan, chairman and country president of Chubb Life Vietnam. “With our goal of sustainable development, Chubb Life Vietnam not only focuses on maintaining exceptional business performance but also strives to create long-term value for our customers and their communities. This award is a great recognition and encouragement to our employees’ unwavering effort to support Vietnam’s future generation.”

Lam Hai Tuan added: “I want to take this opportunity to thank the Ministry for their support and recognition of our work helping to ensure a brighter future for the younger generation.”

Chubb Life Vietnam always stands ready to provide timely and practical support to the community. When a series of rainstorms hit Vietnam’s central region in October 2020, the company donated 15,000 warm coats to children in the affected area through the “Chubb Life Vietnam – Am Tinh Mien Trung ” initiative. Not only did this provide much needed material aid, but it also comforted students and allowed them to get back to their study with ease.

Chubb is the world’s largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance, and life insurance to a diverse group of clients.

Chubb Life is the international life insurance division of Chubb. In Vietnam since 2005, Chubb Life launched its fund management company (Chubb Life Fund Management Co., Ltd.) in 2013. The company offers a range of life protection, health, savings, and investment-linked insurance solutions through its agents and its wide network of offices.

Many universities and colleges’ announcements of rising tuition fee have made students worry; therefore, the Ministry has called for unchanged fees.

According to the Department of Planning and Finance of the Ministry of Education and Training, the Decree No. 86/2015 on the collection and management of tuition fees for educational institutions and the policy of tuition fee exemption has clearly specified the framework and ceiling tuition fees for public higher education institutions.

Under the decree, self-financing public and government-funded high educational facilities have to cover recurrent expenditure and expenses on facility upgrade by themselves, and public educational institutions cannot cover recurrent and investment expenses by themselves. The Decree prescribes an average annual tuition increase of 10 percent. Public university institutions that autonomously implement reform of their operating mechanism under the Resolution No. 77/2014 shall comply with the operation mechanism pilot scheme approved by the Prime Minister.

The government will just stipulate the tuition fee framework for public preschools and high schools, according to the Law on Education 2019 and Decree No. 86 while the specific fee rates for each year shall be determined by provincial people’s councils in accordance with the actual living conditions of the regions and the annual increase in tuition fees must base on the consumer price index announced by the State.

All educational institutions must publicize their training costs, fees and other service charges for the courses in each academic year along with the enrollment notice on the website according to regulations, noted by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The Ministry of Education and Training said that many families care about tuition fees ; therefore, schools must publicize training costs, fees, enrolment charges and other service collection in the courses for an academic year to learners transparently. Schools must be responsible for deducting a portion of their tuition revenue to support students from low-income families.

Many students expressed their concern that they could not attend some schools as planned because the tuition fees exceeded their family’s financial ability.

The Ministry of Education and Training said that the Ministry of Education and Training has currently submitted a draft decree to replace Decree 86/2015 to the Government. From 2020 up to now, the Covid-19 epidemic and natural disasters, storms and floods in many localities have affected the development of the country and affected people’s income; hence, in its draft decree, the Ministry petitioned for unchanging tuition fee to share difficulties with parents and students.

Above all, the draft decree has included more beneficiaries of the policy of exemption and reduction of tuition fees and added many new policies with the aim to ensure all disadvantaged groups can access and benefit from exclusive education. Moreover, the new draft decree focused on supporting schoolers in distant and underprivileged regions to access education.

In addition to the new policies, the policies on tuition fee exemption and reduction, tuition fee support and other regulations in Decree 86/2015 will remain the same for the 2021-2022 school year.

The Ministry of Education and Training has directed educational institutions to keep the tuition fees stable for the forthcoming academic year as well as explain tuition fee collections. At the same time, that ministries, branches, People’s Committees of provinces and cities were asked to increase the appraisal and supervision of revenues and expenditures .

Regarding the ceiling tuition fees for self-financed schools and private schools, the Ministry of Education and Training said that the ministry has coordinated with ministries and agencies to collect opinions of localities and education and training institutions across the country. This new draft Decree on tuition fees with many new policies is of great significance as it links tuition fees not only with the degree of financial autonomy of public schools but more importantly, with the results of the quality assessment of education and training of public education and training institutions.

Specifically, the draft Decree stipulates that public schools which have been granted financial autonomy have not yet passed the quality accreditation, they must not collect fees exceeding a regulated tuition fee cap. Local or international financial-autonomous schools passing the quality accreditation are entitled to collect tuition fees of up to 2-2.5 times higher than their above-mentioned peers.

According to the current regulations in Decree 86, non-public schools including preschools and high schools are allowed to decide on their own fee collection rates but they must publicize the tuition rates for each school year while higher educational facilities and vocational training schools must announce expected tuition fee for the whole course for an academic year.

The draft also stipulates that the maximum increase in tuition fees per academic year does not exceed 10 percent for preschool and high schools and not more than 15 percent for universities. Particularly, the tuition fee for the 2021-2022 school year must not exceed the tuition fee for the 2020-2021 school year already collected by the training institution.

The draft decree also adds detailed policies for students who are eligible for tuition exemption or reduction while studying at private educational institutions. These students will receive grants equal to tuition fee in public schools.