Maritime Bank to prioritize loans for core business projects

HCMC – Maritime Bank will prioritize lending to corporate clients, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), to implement projects within their core business areas.

Nguyen Dinh Tung, deputy general director of Maritime Bank, told reporters in HCMC on Tuesday that the bank was restructuring its credit portfolio with more loans for SMEs operating in the manufacturing sector.
Tung said Maritime Bank was preparing to launch some loan packages with preferential interest rates for SMEs in dire need of funds for their production. He told the Daily that the planned interest rates could be 1-2 percentage points lower than market levels and that the bank would manage to reduce operational costs and increase profitability from other activities to compensate for this difference.
Tung said the bank planned to provide loans that it could break even to certain enterprises but did not explain about the beneficiaries of these special loans.
Maritime Bank had total chartered capital of VND5 trillion (some US$240 million) and total assets of VND116 trillion (over US$5.5 billion) as of December 31 last year.
The bank had some 2,500 regular corporate borrowers, Tung said after signing an agreement with Doanh Nhan Sai Gon for a program aimed to help enterprises address their financing issues.
Economic and commercial experts will be invited to advise on fund seeking as part of the program. Tung said this long-term program would also provide enterprises, particularly SMEs with appropriate supporting packages that also included solutions to finance management and corporate governance in addition to bank loans.

The Saigon Times Daily

Posted in: Business