Hanoi  (VNS/VNA) - Loans of pandemic-hit enterprises will enjoy aninterest rate cut of 2 per cent under a government support package to removedifficulties for the businesses.

Thetotal preferential interest rate package is worth 40 trillion VND (1.75 billionUSD), which comes from the State budget.

Theproposal was drafted in the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s decree on interestrate support from the State budget for loans of enterprises, cooperatives andbusiness households, which has been made public for comment.

Accordingto the draft, beneficiaries of the preferential interest rate credit packageare enterprises, cooperatives and business households in aviation,transportation, warehousing, tourism, accommodation-food services,education-training, agriculture, forestry, fishery, industry, manufacturing,processing, software, computer programming and IT industries.

Besides,businesses, whose loans are used for the purpose of building houses to sell orrent to workers, social houses, and renovating old apartment buildings on thelist of projects announced by the Ministry of Construction, will alsobe beneficiaries.

Underthe draft, loans of the borrowers, which have been disbursed from January 11,2022 to December 31, 2023, will enjoy the interest rate cut. However, theborrowers will not be supported with the interest rate cut if their loans haveoverdue principal balances or late payment interest.

SBVDeputy Governor Dao Minh Tu said the Government assigned the SBV, incoordination with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Planning andInvestment, to draft the decree according to Resolution No. 43/2022/QH15 onfiscal and monetary policies and Resolution No. /NQ-CP on the socio-economicrecovery and development programme of the National Assembly.

Accordingto the draft, commercial banks will get the interest rate aid package totalling40 trillion VND from the Ministry of Finance to provide the loans to theborrowers.

Toprevent frauds, the draft stipulates if the borrowers use the loans forimproper purposes according to the conclusions of the competent authorities,they will have to repay the interest rate cut amount for the State budget.

Accordingto SBV Governor Nguyen Thi Hong, the banking industry cut lending interestrates three times totalling 1.8 percentage points in the past two years.

FromJuly 15 to December 31, 2021, 16 commercial banks cut over 21.24 trillion VND (936million USD) of loan interest for COVID-19-hit customers. Of which, Agribankmade the sharpest reduction with more than 5.51 trillion VND for more than3.5 million customers. It was followed by Vietcombank with 4.63 trillion VNDfor 269,644 customers and BIDV with more than 4.12 trillion VND for 452,746customers.

Besidesthe Government’s preferential interest rate package, the banking industry willstrive to continually reduce the lending rate by 0.5-1 percentage points in2022 and 2023./.