Addressing the conference, Chairman of the Board of Directors and President and CEO of the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PVN) Le Manh Hung said regulating monetary policy plays a very important role, especially in the context that Vietnam’s outstanding credit debt to GDP is among the highest in the world. PVN highly appreciates the monetary and credit policies that have stabilized interest rates, inflation and exchange rates, helping large enterprises like PVN get positive results and stability over the past time.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of PVN Le Manh Hung

Financial restructuring in PVN’s investment projects is very important, helping the Group reduce average cost of capital for each project of its member units. For example, currently, PVN is negotiating with banks to restructure loans of the Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical complex project with new loans at a lower average cost of capital, helping optimize production and business costs of the enterprise.

In the coming time, according to the 2021-2025 period plan, PVN plans to mobilize about VND250.3 trillion for investment and development. Therefore, PVN hopes that the Government and the State Bank of Vietnam will continue to maintain optimal and stable interest rate policies to facilitate operation of the Group and other enterprises in general.

Regarding exchange rates, PVN’s current foreign currency loan balance is VND38 trillion, equivalent to about US$1.55 billion. The fluctuations in exchange rates would greatly affect the group’s business and production activities, especially in risk management.

As for lending policy, PVN’s investment projects are very large in scale, such as the Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical complex project, up to nearly US$5 billion. Therefore, if the Government and the SBV adopt policies to support the four large state-owned commercial banks like now, consider each single case especially with large corporations and large projects, and raise the loan limit for each unit, or for the entire complex, then large enterprises and super-large projects could access and use domestic credit sources.

Oil and gas exploitation at the Bach Ho field

That policy will help investors such as PVN and domestic banks control their average cost of capital in case of fluctuations. If domestic credit institutions have good relationships, not only through investment projects, but also via production and business activities, then they can sit down and adjust indexes in certain difficult times. This will help businesses overcome difficulties and map out long-term development orientations.

PVN believes that an optimal monetary policy will be an important driving force to reach targets, including production, business and investment, especially for businesses using large financial leverage from the credit market like PVN.

In the coming time, PVN hopes that the State Bank will continue to adopt stable monetary and credit policies as in the past to support investment with an annual growth rate target of 3 to 6.5 percent directed by the Government.