Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Experts have said that the supportpolicies must be practical to ensure accessibility for enterprises.

Several support measures introduced recently have proven not aseffective as expected.

Recently, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) proposed the undisbursedpart of the 2% interest rate support package, worth up to 40 trillion VND (1.7billion USD), to be transferred into other forms of support.

Statistics showed that only around 256 billion VND of the packagewas disbursed to 1,784 customers as of the end of February. It was forecastthat about 2.57 trillion VND would be disbursed by the end of this year whenthe package expired. This would mean that only 6% of the package was disbursed,leaving a huge sum of more than 37.4 trillion VND unspent.

Ha Thu Giang, Director of the SBV’s Credit Department, said thatenterprises needed support such as capital sources or tax reduction rather thaninterest rate support.

The central bank sent the evaluation of the support package to theMinistry of Planning and Investment for consideration of using the undisbursedsum for other forms of support which are more feasible.

Previously, a survey of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce andIndustry (VCCI) in 2022 found that 29.5% of enterprises heard about the supportpackage but only 2% received loans from the 2% interest rate support package.More than 56% of enterprises said they faced difficulties when accessing theloans.

Nguyen Xuan Thong, Deputy General Secretary of the HanoiAssociation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, said that the conditions ofthe loans from the support package presented a significant difficulty toenterprises.

Regarding the proposal of the central bank to transfer theundisbursed sum of the 2% interest rate support package into other forms ofsupport, many experts said this should be the way to go and must be implementedas early as possible.

Pham Xuan Hoe, former Director of the Banking Strategy Institute,said it was difficult for enterprises to meet the requirements for the loans,especially in the context that property assets were going down.

The support package should be transformed into funds to providetrust-based guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises, he said.

Cao Viet Sinh, former Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment,said that the resource from the 2% interest rate support should be used toprovide other forms of support such as tax and fee reductions or to acceleratepublic investment.

Nguyen Quoc Viet, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Institute for Economicand Policy Research, said if the package could not be changed immediately, itwas pressing to remove obstacles which required banks and customers to sit downtogether to find out problems and solutions, so that the credit flow could beimproved.

Another opinion was that the support package should be providedfor the development of social housing projects or housing projects for workers,a focus of credit policy to ensure social security.

Statistics showed that Vietnam would need around 849.5 trillion VNDto develop more than 1 million apartments for low-income earners by 2030./.