The headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam (Photo: VNA)

After many consecutive sessions of net withdrawal, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) last week net injected more than 5.09 trillion VND (199.7 million USD) through the open market operation (OMO) and bill channels to support liquidity in the banking system.

Specifically, on the OMO channel, the SBV lent commercial banks a total of nearly 35.62 trillion VND with an interest rate of 4%. Last week saw a maturity amount of more than 33.5 trillion VND on the channel, so the SBV’s total net injection via this was 2.09 trillion VND.

On the bill channel, the SBV issued 2 trillion VND of bills last week. As nearly 5 trillion of bills matured last week, the SBV’s net injection through this channel was about 3 trillion VND.

According to data of the financial data provider Wigroup, the interest rate on bills was lower, down to 3.1% last week from 3.2% the previous week. The interest rate on bills decreased by a total of 1.9 percentage points in the past two weeks, from 4.0% to 3.1% per year.

In the interbank market, overnight interest rates tended to decrease last week, except for the session on March 4. Accordingly, overnight interbank interest rates increased to 4.74% per year on March 3, but then decreased to 3.98% per year on March 6, a significant decrease compared to the peak of 6.09% per year recorded on November 4, 2024.

Interbank interest rates for terms from one week to three months are currently fluctuating from 4.02-5.02% per annum.

Deposit interest rates listed at commercial banks have also reduced by 0.1-0.9 percentage points depending on terms in the past two weeks. The rates for several key terms have dropped below 6%.

According to data from the US Federal Reserve (Fed)’s New York branch, the gap between the US secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) and the Vietnam’s overnight interest rate on March 6 was 0.37%. The high USD and VND interest rate gap is putting more pressure on the USD/VND exchange rate.

In a currency market report released recently, the MB Securities Company (MBS) said that the USD/VND exchange rate fluctuated strongly throughout last month, as the US dollar index (DXY) in the global market remained at a high level while domestic demand for the dollar increased due to enterprises’ rising imports of production materials and the State Treasure’s large dollar purchase.

MBS’s analysts forecast that in the first quarter of 2025, the USD/VND exchange rate would fluctuate between 25,500 - 25,800 VND per dollar as the DXY was predicted to further strengthen in 2025 due to trade tensions.

However, there were still positive factors supporting the dong, such as a positive trade surplus of about 1.47 billion USD, a strong FDI disbursement of 2.95 billion USD and a marked recovery of the tourism industry./.