Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the State Bank of Vietnam, Hochiminh City branch said remittances to the city reached about $2 billion after five months, nearly doubling from Q1/2018 ($1.1 billion).
In addition, these remittances mainly flowed into manufacturing and business instead of in real estate, securities and savings like before.
Remittances often depend on macro-economic condition, situation of labourers abroad, and remittance attracting services. Representative of the State Bank, HCM City branch said since the beginning of this year, the situation seems to be positive, the inward remittances have been very stable and increased steadily.
In addition, over the last period, stable economic situation and exchange rate pressure due to eliminated market psychology was the major reason why remittance receivers have gradually shifted from hoarding foreign currencies to dong.
As a result, the US dollar/dong exchange rate does not fluctuate too strongly since the beginning of this year. At the end of June 12, each US dollar was listed around 22,775-22,845 dong, unchanged from the previous day. In recent years, inward remittances to HCM City increased an average of 8-10 percent/annum.