The Ministry of Construction (MOC) cited a State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) report as saying that outstanding loans to urban area and housing development projects had reached VND283.876 trillion; office buildings VND39.096 trillion; industrial zone and export processing zone VND67.557 trillion; and tourism complex and resort VND45.177 trillion.

Meanwhile, VND123.083 trillion was provided to fund home building and repair for lease, VND68.694 trillion for land use right purchases, and VND335.565 trillion for other real estate businesses.

The government and SBV in the fourth quarter 2023 applied comprehensive solutions to ease difficulties and increase capital absorption capability of the national economy. 

Many commercial banks continued to cut deposit interest rates and lending interest rates on new loans by 2 percent per year on average compared with late 2022. The interest rates of home loans also decreased.

Regarding corporate bond issuance, MOC cited statistics from the Vietnam Bond Market Association as saying that the total value of bonds issued in 2023 was VND311.240 trillion.

These included 29 public issuance campaigns with total value of VND37 trillion, accounting for 11.9 percent of total value, and 286 private issuance campaigns with total value of VND275 trillion (88.1 percent), of which 23.5 percent of value was issued by real estate firms.

Regarding capital from foreign direct investment, the General Statistics Office (GSO) reported that in 2023, foreign investors made investments in 18 out of 21 business fields. Real estate was in the second position of the list with total investment capital of $4.67 billion, accounting for 12.7 percent of total registered capital, up 4.8 percent over the year before.

To ensure stable, safe and healthy development of the real estate market, MOC has requested SBV to instruct commercial banks to apply solutions to stimulate credit to real estate firms.

It is necessary that realtors, real estate projects and home buyers can access bank loans more easily. SBV has been urged to direct commercial banks to speed up disbursement of the VND120 trillion credit package with preferential interest rates.

At a workshop held in late October 2023, Nguyen Xuan Bac from SBV admitted that the disbursement of the package had been slow. Three reasons were cited, including the limited supply, the unattractiveness of social housing projects and unreasonable requirements on buyers.

He said that the VND120 trillion credit package is a long-term program and needs time to increase the disbursement.

Hong Khanh