Since the beginning of last week, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) returned to bill issuance after a long time stopping this activity. Notably, this was also the time when treasury bill interest rate fell from 2.75 percent to 2.5 percent per annum.
Specifically, during the week of September 16th to 20th, the operator offered 69 trillion dong of bills on a term of seven days and at interest rate of 2.5 percent per annum. Credit institutions absorbed 68.990 trillion dong.
On mortgage channel, the SBV regularly offered one trillion dong on all five sessions on seven-day term, interest rate fell to 4.5 percent per annum. However, no winning volume was recorded.
Thus, in the week, the SBV net withdrew up to 68.990 trillion dong, equivalent to the volume of treasury bills in circulation, a rarely large scale.
The size of the above withdrawal move reflects the temporary abundance of the system liquidity.
Moreover, it also indirectly shows the amount of dong injected by the SBV to purchase US dollars when the US dollar/dong exchange rate on the interbank market at some points fell deeply below the spot buying rate of the operator.
According to Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI)’s preliminary assessment, the foreign exchange reserves are at the highest level ever, estimated at 70 billion US dollars.
On the interbank capital market, the dong interest rates in the last week continued to maintain the sharp downturn recorded in the previous weeks on all terms. Closing the week on September 20th, the interbank interest rates in dong were traded at 2.26 percent per annum on overnight term (down by 0.52 percentage point), 2.5 percent per annum on one-week term (down by 0.46 percentage point), 2.78 percent per annum on two-week term (down by 0.44 percent percentage point), and 3.22 percent per annum on one-month term (down by 0.32 percentage point).
Meanwhile, in the last week, the US dollar interbank interest rates slightly increased on overnight term and decreased on the remaining terms. Closing the week on September 20th, the rates stood at 2.23 percent per annum on overnight term (up by 0.01 percentage point), 2.28 percent per annum on one-week term (down by 0.03 percentage point), 2.37 percent per annum on two-week term (down by 0.04 percentage point) and 2.47 percent per annum on one-month term (down by 0.08 percentage point).
Thus, the US dollar-dong interest rate difference on the interbank market was clearly narrowed in the last week.
On the foreign currency market, the central reference rate was slightly adjusted across the sessions. Closing the week on September 20th, the reference rate was listed at 23,142 dong per US dollar, up by nine dong compared to the previous week.
The spot buying rate was still listed at 23,200 dong per US dollar, while the spot selling rate was 50 dong lower than the ceiling exchange rate, closing the week at 23,786 dong per US dollar.
The interbank exchange rate in the last week continued to fluctuate slightly against the SBV’s buying rate. Closing the week on September 20th, the interbank exchange rate was recorded at 23,204 dong per US dollar, up by one dong against the last session of the previous week.
