Statistics in a report of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) showed that from the beginning of the year to the third week of April 2019, the State purchased up to 8.35 billion US dollars from credit institutions to supplement the national forex reserves. This number is equivalent to an average of nearly 2.1 billion US dollar per month, and it is the highest number ever.
Notably, the amount of foreign currency SBV purchased in the past few months is even much larger than the total amount of foreign currency purchased by the agency in the whole year 2018. Specifically, at the conference on implementing banking tasks in 2019 held earlier this year, the SBV’s Governor Le Minh Hung said that in 2018, the SBV purchased about six billion US dollars to supplement national forex reserves.
According to some large members participating in the interbank market, with 8.35 billion US dollars purchased within less than the first four months of the year, the national foreign exchange (forex) reserves may have reached a record high of 66 billion US dollars, equivalent to about three months of imports.
This is a huge increase of the national forex reserves in only a short time. Previously, at the government’s online meeting with local authorities in June 2018, the data revealed by Governor Hung pointed out that the national forex reserves at that time reached 63.5 billion US dollars, and is a record number at that time.
“We expect that with the abundant forex reserves accumulated over the time, the SBV will be able to overcome external impacts and stabilise Vietnam’s monetary market in the near future”, said an investment organisation.
