At the meeting, representatives from the country’s four largest banks including Vietcombank, VietinBank, BIDV and Agribank said they have not increased interest rates since late last year.
According to general director of Vietinbank, Le Duc Tho, deposit and lending interest rates at his bank have remained stable and would continue to stay unchanged in the coming months.
Vice chairman of Techcombank, Do Tuan Anh also said that the bank has no plan to adjust interest rates in the coming time.
Pham Thanh Ha, deputy general director of Vietcombank, said they are offering lowest lending interest rate of 6.5% a year.
"Our ratio of short-term funds for medium and long-term loans was currently lower than 30 per cent," Ha said, adding that they have no pressure to attract savings.
Representatives from Military Bank, SHB and TPBank also said they had not raised interest rates in the first quarter and did not for the moment have any plans to raise the rate.
Meanwhile, some other banks like VPBank, HDBank, VIB and Sacombank, which increased their rates in the first quarter, said there was no pressure on liquidity but the increase was part of their standard operations to meet business targets.
Pham Quoc Thanh, deputy general director of HDBank, said his bank in the first quarter inched up interest rates for 6-11 month deposits by 0.2-0.3 percentage points against the end of 2016 only to maintain its market share, and not because of liquidity pressure.
In March, after some banks sharply increased long-term interest rates offered on certificates of deposit to 8.2-9.2 per cent per year, leading to concerns about a rate rise race, the SBV was forced to make an announcement saying the adjustment was a standard procedure to fit banks’ business strategies. It said some banks could increase interest rate temporarily at this time, and could then adjust the rate lower next time.
Speaking at the meeting, state bank's deputy governor Nguyen Thi Hong asserted that the central bank would still pursue its target of keeping interest rate stable and try to cut the rate if possible in the remaining months of the year.
The central bank will closely monitor the monetary market to support liquidity for commercial banks through open market operations and refinancing, she said.
Hong said the target of interest rate stabilisation would be closely integrated with the recovery of bad debts and restructuring of the banking system.
A draft law on supporting the banking system’s restructuring and recovery of bad debts would be submitted to the National Assembly in May, she said.