The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has asked some commercial banks toimplement an associated credit programme between investors, contractors,construction material suppliers and banks, in a bid to tackledifficulties for businesses operating in construction and property.

The programme will be executed by commercial entities the Bank forInvestment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), the Vietnam Joint StockCommercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank), the Joint StockCommercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), the MekongHousing Bank (MHB), the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development(Agribank), the Vietnam Construction Bank, the Lien Viet Post Bank andthe Saigon-Hanoi Bank (SHB).

Under an officialdocument delivered to the commercials banks, the scope of the programmecan be expanded to other fields such as basic construction, andtransport and energy projects.

On April 22, the SBVpresided over a meeting aimed to collect opinions on the draft creditcooperation agreement between the four economic entities.

In another move, the SBV has approved capital replenishment forcommercial banks which join a 30 trillion VND (1.42 billion USD) packagefor housing support announced last year by the central bank.

Vietinbank topped the receivers of capital replenishment with morethan 100 billion VND (4.7 million USD) in March; followed by BIDV withmore than 81 billion VND (3.80 million USD); Vietcombank with over 34.6billion VND (1.62 million USD); Agribank with 24.5 billion VND (1.15million USD); and MHB with 960 million VND (45,120 USD).

Commercial banks had by March 31 disbursed over 3.12 trillion VND(146.64 million USD) from the housing support package to 3,537customers.-VNA