VND3 trillion to help troubled firms in city
By Van Nam - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – The central bank’s HCMC branch and Vietnam Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank) are asked to allocate VND2-3 trillion for troubled companies in the city to restore their production.
This is the request of HCMC Chairman Le Hoang Quan made at the municipal government’s meeting on Thursday over the central Government’s Resolution 13 on easing the hardship in production and business activities.
Chairman Quan assigned the Department of Finance, the Department of Industry and Trade and the HCMC Union of Business Associations to collect the specific figures of how many enterprises in each sector are having capital access problems.
Removing the difficulties of producers and exporters will be the top priority of the city from now to the year-end, said Quan. Still, the city will not support the constantly loss-making businesses.
Nguyen Ngoc Thang, deputy director of the central bank’s HCMC branch, told the Daily that exporters, agribusinesses and small and medium-sized enterprises can approach the capital source at the lending rate of 15%.
The biggest problem of enterprises with bad debts is they lack assets for mortgage, Thang noted. Recently, some commercial lenders even accept inventories as collateral for loans provided that the unsold products are of warranted quality, he said.
In the first four months of the year, the mobilized capital of the city-based credit institutions recorded poor growth of 0.52%. The total outstanding loans in four months amounted to some VND898 trillion, in which bad debts made up 5.3%.
Nguyen Thi Hong, vice chairwoman of HCMC, said the city and the Ministry of Finance would provide guidelines on the issues related to the preferential tax polices in Resolution 13 late next week.
She proposed the central bank should have clear instructions on beneficiaries of Resolution 13 and the procedures and schedule for implementing the debt restructuring measures on a transparent basis.
The Government’s Resolution 13 was released on May 10, offering solutions such as a 30% corporate income tax cut in 2012 and a six-month extension for value-added tax payments for April, May and June for small and medium enterprises and those using a large amount of labor.
A senior official of the HCMC Department of Taxation said with the 30% corporate tax reduction, the city’s tax revenue would drop by VND1.85 trillion this year.