Mr. Pham Thanh Tan, CEO and General Director of Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development and Chairman, Asia Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association, addresses the global financial crisis as it has remained a challenge to all nations and has been affecting economies at various levels.

I. INTRODUCTION

I would like to start by thanking you for giving me this opportunity to present a paper on the impact of the financial crisis on Vietnamese economy, The Action Plan of Vietnamese Government and the State Bank of Viet Nam and AGRIBANK’s role in stabilizing monetary market in Viet Nam.

The global financial crisis has remained a common challenge to all nations, declining every economy at different levels. Being an open economy, Viet Nam has been under the influence of the crisis, especially in terms of trade and investment, of which the exports, the attraction of foreign investment capital and economic growth have been affected negatively.

II. THE IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS ON VIETNAMESE ECONOMY

1. Economic Growth Rate

The negative influence of the Global Financial Crisis has resulted in a slowdown in the Vietnamese economic growth rate. According to the plan of early 2008, GDP growth rate was expected to be from 8.5% to 9%. Although the National Assembly had adjusted the GDP growth rate to 7% in May 2008, the actual GDP growth was 6.52 % in October and 2008’s GDP growth was only 6.23%.

2. Financial and Banking System

Although Vietnamese financial and banking system has not seriously suffered from the impacts of the Global Financial Crisis because it has been only at the beginning of integration, Vietnamese financial and banking system has been affected to the extent of:

The connection between the Vietnamese financial and banking system and the international financial market met some difficulties;

The ability of international banking and financial transaction has decreased which has affected the Viet Nam’s short term loans at banks and enterprises;

Due to the direct influence of the crisis, in short term, many banks’ profits have decreased, even some small-sized banks may have loss; NPLs may increase; thus the impact on Vietnamese financial and banking system can remain in several years.

3. Import – Export Operation

In the context of the global economic recession, export market has fluctuated disadvantageously, especially American and European market. Export turn-over faced a downward trend in the last months of 2008. Though the whole year’s turn-over reached around USD 62.9 billion, a 29.5% increase compared with 2007, the increase was mainly resulted from the rise in the goods’ price in the international market rather than the rise in the goods quantity.

Import turn-over reached USD 80.4 billion in 2008, increasing by 28% compared with 2007. In general, 2008’s import turn-over of most of goods serving domestic production and consumption rose compared with the same period of 2007, mainly because of the increase in import price, in which the price of some rose to a high level such as: fertilizer price increased by 94.2%; petrol price 53.5%, and unprocessed steel price 45.8%.

4. Foreign Investment including the foreign direct investment and portfolio investment

According to the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) – Ministry of Planning and Investment, foreign enterprises’ registered capital in 2008 was estimated to reach USD 64 billion including new-registered projects and expanded operating projects, in which capital for new-registered projects was USD 60.2 billion, executed capital reached over USD 11 billion.

However, in the context of crisis situation, capital cost has become higher and export market can be narrowed down, so capital flow to Viet Nam may decrease. Moreover, most of investment projects in general and FDI in particular have utilized a great proportion of borrowed fund out of the total capital. Therefore, the difficulties of the credit institutions and banks will result in the failure for signing or disbursement of loan contracts. This is the reason why executed capital in 2008 was low, accounting for only about 17.2% of the registered capital. From December of 2008, a downward trend in newly invested capital has appeared. Most of foreign investors are from Asia (13% from Japan and 67% from other Asian countries), the investors from Europe and the US account for a rather small proportion, about 5% of the registered capital.

5. Stock Markets face difficulties, the investors meet disadvantages

The impact of the financial crisis has spread over the international financial market; thus foreign investors and investment funds have faced more difficulties in mobilizing fund and they tend to be more prudent in making the investment decision when their big markets are dealing with a number of difficulties and they were forced to restructure the Security in Viet Nam.

Due to the influence of the global financial crisis, listed enterprises could not avoid the bad effects, especially the export enterprises, thus the stock price decreased.

The influence of Global Financial Crisis has created a so-called sychological effect to Vietnamese stock investors, immediately affecting negatively the domestic stock market.

6. Real estate market

At present, the majority of real estate enterprises in Viet Nam have limited financial capacity; most of them depend on outside capital, mainly from banks and credit institutions. Therefore, those enterprises are facing difficulties in the current financial crisis situation.

At the end of 2007, real estate speculation had pushed the price of Vietnamese real estate to a too high level compared with the real value. Market became a virtual fever; virtual demand increased. In 2008, Vietnamese economy had met with the difficulties due to the effect of the global financial crisis, the increased inflation made people to tighten the purse-strings, real estate market had been frozen, the price of real estate decreased by 40%, real estate enterprises fell into the difficulty and could not sell the products, incurring a high interest rate because of the tightening monetary policies. Up to now, the real estate market has not seen the signal of recovery. The reduction in the real estate price would result in the reduction of the banks’ assets; the increase in NPLs ratio has led to unfavorable capital structure for commercial banks.

7. Goods and services market

Demand has decreased both in production and consumption in the context of international economic recession, though Vietnamese macro economic situation has been improved, difficulties are still ahead. Many enterprises had to cut down their production and business plans, narrowed the size due to the increase in production cost, especially in the banks interest rate. The total retail sales of consumer goods and service revenue in 2008 in real price increased by 31% compared with 2007. The figure was 6.5% if the rise in price was not taken into account.

Consumption Price in December, 2008 increased by 19.98% compared with the same period of 2007. Average consumption price in 2008 rose by 22.97% compared with 2007. The group of goods with a high rise in CPI in December, 2008 was: alimental services price went up by 31.86%, food price 43.25%, foodstuff 26.53%. The price of other groups of goods grew by about 10% and decreased slightly in the last three months of 2008 due to the reduction in social purchasing power.

Tourism has increased slowly. Global economic recession has affected seriously to the number of tourists to Viet Nam. The number of turns of foreigners coming to Vietnam in 2008 reached 4.253 million, increasing by 0.6% compared with 2007; in which the visitors coming for traveling reached 2.63 million, increased by 1%; for business 845 thousand, increasing by 25.4%, for visiting relatives: 509 thousand, decreasing by 15.2%. Therefore, the plan of 4.5 million arrivals has failed to be achieved.

It can be said that the global financial crisis has impacted many fields of Vietnamese economy. The economic growth rate has been slowed down; consumer price index has increased many times compared with the previous years and it is still at a rather high level; the macro economic stability has not been solid and hidden many threats; people’s living standard is still low especially the people with low-income and people in remote areas.

III. THE ACTION PLANS OF VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE BANK OF VIETNAM

1. The Action Plans of Vietnamese Government

The global financial crisis has happened in large scale with more complicated developments and caused more serious consequences than forecasted. This has continued to have negative impacts on Viet Nam economy, putting forth more difficulties in macro economic stability, inflation control and growth maintenance in the coming time. However, Viet Nam has the basic advantages: stable socio-political conditions, great internal force and growth potential, expanded export markets, better reputation and relations in international arena, improved investment environment and Vietnamese and foreign investors’ belief towards economic development prospect.

Realizing the difficulties, challenges and advantages, Vietnamese government has applied 05 groups of polices including:

The first group: Policies to boost up production, business and exports. Applying policies to solve difficulties in production and business to boost up production of goods with high growth and domestically-consuming goods, particularly foods, beverage, textiles, medicine; expanding the consuming markets of substantial and centrally-produced agri-products such as rice, fishery, coffee, rubber; applying financial and monetary policies needed to support the consumption of industrial goods such as steel, cement, paper, chemicals. The structure of production and import – export has been adjusted towards improving quality and value of traditional export goods as well as those which are less dependent on natural conditions. The production and export of potential goods as arts and crafts, rubber, processed food, mechanical products and software services have been promoted; intensifying trade promotion, expanding export markets.

The second group: Policies for demand-stimulus of investment and consumption have been applied through mitigating the difficulties, facilitating and encouraging all economic sectors to directly participate in investment and business development in which acceleration of investment in state-budgeted projects and works has been focused, especially important and urgent infrastructure, traffic, irrigational, electricity works; Utilizing “House for the poor” policy and issuing the policy to raise social house fund for the period of 2009-2015, and encouraging to build house for workers in industrial zones. Details are as follows:

Demand-stimulus through interest-rate preference and borrowing guarantee: Vietnamese government plans to use VND 17 trillion equivalent to USD 1 billion to support interest rate for enterprises of all economic sectors to solve short-term difficulties and medium and long-term projects until the end of 2011.

The government has allowed to (i) Extend the 4% preferential interest-rate policy for enterprises borrowing medium and long term loans; (ii) Support interest-rate for the farmers to buy equipment and materials for agricultural production and house building; (iii) Expand the list of enterprises being granted credit guarantee through Vietnam Development Bank to enterprises having at least 1,000 workers.

Investment-stimulus: Revising mechanisms, policies and organizations to foster budget’s disbursement. Important and urgent projects to be implemented in 2009 will be given capital in advance; capital mobilization from Government bonds will be enhanced to invest in infrastructure and education projects; loans to the localities with 0% interest rate will be increased to develop rural traffic, consolidate canals, and develop aquaculture and trade villages’ infrastructure.

The third group: Fiscal and monetary policies:

Fiscal policies: Applying tax exemption, reduction and extension: reducing 30% of enterprise’s income tax in the forth quarter of 2008 and 2009 for small and medium enterprises, enterprises using a large number of workers, enterprises in agriculture, forestry, fishery, textile, shoes, and processing areas; supplementing a timely VAT refund policy; Having extended time of collecting individual income tax for many people (laborers, business people) until May 2009; reducing 50% of VAT for some goods from February 2009, and five more groups of goods from May 2009; reducing some lines of tax for cars. Practicing saving, controlling overspending’s budget at an acceptable level.

Monetary policies: The government will control exchange rate flexibly, efficiently, reduce lending interest rate basing on market signals; manage foreign exchange rate in accordance with market signals, encourage exports, control imports, stabilize macro economy, ensure the sustainability of the banking system, guarantee Viet Nam’s balance of payment.

The government creates favorable conditions for enterprises to get access to credit including issuing credit guarantee, especially for SMEs, enterprises in export sector and enterprises having difficulties in selling products.

The fourth group: Social welfare Ensuring policies:

This has been one of the main policies of Vietnamese government over the past years in order to ensure life quality for people, sustainability in poverty reduction achievements and in achieving the Millennium goals of Viet Nam.

The Government has spent the budget to support the poor, people who receive low income from the State budget, retired people and other policy people from the fourth quarter of 2008. The lending policy to poor pupils and students and poor families has been fostered. The policy investing in 61 districts with more than 50% poor households to build infrastructure and develop business, and researching to soon implement unemployment insurance policy has been implemented.

The Government continues to support food, money, variety of plant and animal to avoid hunger and make quick recovery after natural disasters;

National reserve of food has been supplemented to actively rescue people in natural disasters affected areas, avoiding hunger.

The Government continues to subsidize and encourage investment to build houses for the poor, the beneficiary of social welfare, the laborers in centralized industrial zones, the pupils, students; assisting the laborers affected by economic downturn; lending without interest rate to help the unemployed and utilizing unemployment insurance policy pursuant to the Law of Social Insurance.

The fifth group: Enhancing management and organization policies

The Vietnamese government has fully realized difficulties and followed closely international market’s changes, applying strong, flexible and timely policies, particularly taking care of economic forecast and analysis; using market-based policies and tools to manage economy rather than the administrative measures. The government has also actively provided information and coordinated closely with news agencies for transparency in socio-economy information; improving social unity, people’s support, and investors’ participation and belief.

2. The Action Plan of the State Bank of Vietnam

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has gradually eased monetary policies by flexible measures to boost up the production and trading development and actively prevented the economic recession risk. SBV has timely reduced the base interest rate and the reserve requirement ratio, increased the interest rate paid to the required reserve so that credit institutions have been able to reduce lending interest rates, thus helping enterprises access to banking loans with acceptable interest rates to maintaining and developing production and business, widened the trading band for the USD/VND exchange rate applicable to credit institutions, regulated the average exchange rate in the inter-bank market in a gradually increasing manner in conformity with the supply of and demand for foreign currencies in the market; supporting exports, limiting the import surplus.

SBV has also instructed commercial banks to adjust their business plan and credit structure in conformity with the policies for economic development of the Party and State as well as of the banking sector while at the same time, closely control their credit quality, giving capital priority to production, exports and imports of essential goods, agriculture and rural areas, small and medium-sized enterprises and effective investment projects, ensuring to meet the capital demand for purpose of growth at appropriate rate and the prevention of economic recession.

SBV continues to revise its regulations on monetary and banking activities, make proposals to the Government and the National Assembly to adjust and supplement regulations to create a favorable environment for the sustainable and stable development of the banking system; instruct credit institutions to strengthen their programs of re-structuring and increasing operational capacity and competitiveness, foster the modernization of banking technology, and develop non-cash payment so as to make the highest use of the source of idle capital of the society for investment and production expansion.

IV. SATISFACTORY RESULTS

1. Achivements in 2008

By the synchronous and strong solutions, in 2008, the macro economy was basically stablized, social security was ensured and economic growth rate was maintained at 6.23%, export increased by alomost 30%, FDI registered capital reached USD 64 billion. Details are as follows:

Macro economic stability: Basically, macro economic stability was ensured though there were a lot of difficulties. Imcome and spending of the State Budget were balanced. The total income of the State Budget exceeded the Budget Estimation and increased by 26.3% compared with 2007. The total spending achieved the Budget Estimation. Overspending of Stage Budget over GDP was 4.95%, complying with the National Assembly’s permittance. Import and export had gained positive changes. The export turn-over reached USD 62.9 billion, exceeding the plan. Import turn-over reached USD 80.4 billion, rosed by 28% compared to 2007. Goods import surplus was around USD 17 billion. The target of controling trade balance was implemented as planned (under USD 20 billion).

Social security: Though there were still lots of issues, there were great efforts in implementing specific policies to ensure the employment and increase the income for low-income people, beneficiaries of social welfare, and natural calamity and epidemic diseases areas etc.

Maintaining the economic growth at an appropriate rate: GDP went up by 6.23%, in which agricultture – forestry – aquaculture sector rose by 5.6%, industry sector grew by 14.6% and total retail sales of consumer goods and service in real price increased by 31%, the figure was 6.5% if the rise in price was excluded. In the context of global economic recession (according to World Bank, world economic growth rate in 2008 was only 2.5%, the lowest level in the past years, negative growth rates were deen in some developed countries like the US, Japan, Germany, France), Viet Nam economic achievement was remarkable.

Foreign Direct Investment: The increase in foreign direct investment was a positive achivement. Registered foreign capital in 2008 reached about USD 64 billion, in which the new registered projects were worth USD 60.2 billion, executed capital reached over USD 11 billion.

Banking operation: It can be affirmed that despite many difficulties and challenges in 2008, the domestic banking sector basically completed the tasks assigned by the Party and the State. The operation of the banking system made important contribution to curbing inflation, reducing trade deficit and maintaining economic growth. The domestic monetary market stayed stable. The interest rates and exchange rate developed in a reasonable level. The credit organizations liquidities were assured. Credit growth was maintained at a reasonable level, meeting in time the requirements of loans for economic growth. The operations of credit institutions were secured and saw development. By late 2008, the equity of the whole banking system increased by 30% compared to late 2007. The capital adequacy ratio rose from 8.9% to 9.7%. Compared with 2007, credit capital for privately-owned business sector increased by 37%, State-owned business sector rose by 12%, export sector went up by 37%, production sector grew by 34%, agriculture and rural area rose by 30%, other bebeficiaries of social welfare increased by 40%. NPLs ratio of the whole system accounted for 3.5% of total outstanding loans. Credit instiutions have continued to pay attention to develop modern technology and services ; operation networks have continued to be consolidated and expanded in order to create good conditions for their customers.

2. Viet Nam economic sistuation in the early months of 2009

Generally, Viet Nam economy in the first quarter of 2009, under domestic difficult conditions added with negative impacts of international financial crisis and economic downturn, achieved positive results in comparison with other countries.

First, the economy positively grew while most of world economies substantially decreased. Three sectors got positive growth. Agriculture – aquaculture – forestry sector rose by 0.9% in value of production and by 0.4% in added value, making the economy basically stable.

Industry – construction sector rose by 1.5%. The construction sector decreased in 2008, but rose by 6.9% in the first quarter of 2009 as a bright result of investment stimulus and a signal of growth towards economic recovery. Service sector which is normally heavily affected by the crisis fairly grew by 5.4%, showing the sector’s great effort.

Second, domestic consumption shows the signs of recovery. Total retail sales of consumer goods and service have increased by 21.9%, the figure is 6.5% if the rise of average consumption price over the same period last year (14.47%) is not taken into account. This growth rate has resulted from the demand stimulus package, contributing to cover the decrease of exports and making the growth of value added services higher than the overall growth rate, thus making overall growth rate higher than that of two industries: agriculture, forestry, aquatic product, and industry – construction.

Third, exports have climbed by 2.4% compared with the same period of 2008 to USD 13.5 billion, in which domestic sectors have increased dramatically (by 40.3%) and exports of agriculture products, such as rice have increased substantially (by 71.3% in quantity and 76.2% in turnover), cassava and cassava products (123.4%), pepper (by 64.5% in quantity and 15.5% in turnover), tea (by 10.2% in quantity and 10.5% in turnover). Import turn-over reached USD 11.3 billion, a 45% decrease compared to the same period of 2008, in which the domestic economic sector reached USD 7.5 billion, decreasing by 50.4%; foreign investment sector reached USD 4.3 billion, decreasing by 32.4 %.

Fourth, an equilibrium and surplus balance of trade and payment is maintained. In the first quarter of 2009, the balance of trade gained a USD 1.7 billion surplus. The balance of payment was maintained. Foreign exchange reservation was kept at a safe level. Inflation was put under control. Stock market has recovered, VN index increased by 37% in March 2009. Commercial banks are getting stable growth.

V. ACTION PLANS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES

1. The Action plans of Viet Nam Government

Despite the positive developments, Viet Nam’s economy is still facing a number of challenges such as difficulties in industry production and exports, the low rate of the Government bonds and FDI disbursement, the increasing complex situation of diseases, especially diarrhea and influenza type A H1N1.

In order to extricate such difficulties, Vietnamese Government has worked out five key measures as follows:

First, control the macro-economy in a non-subjective and non-confusing manner. Right direction, decisive and effective implementation; controlling the management of interest rate and foreign exchange rate to ensure the banking system is safe and secured; closely follow up import surplus; the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) has to consider the overall balance of payment carefully; financial sector has to ensure the state budget collection as planned.

Second, develop production and business, regarding the agriculture as the priority field, provide enough breeds for farmers to raise productivity, re-examine the rise and cat fish export project aimed at benefit and efficiency for the farmers, implement credit guarantee and interest rate subsidy for production, industry, service; improve the administrative procedures; speed up the disbursement of fund for construction.

Third, secure social welfare, implementing effectively the program of “61 poor districts”, reducing the number of poor households, supporting unemployed people, preventing the diseases and epidemics.

Fourth, ensure national security and defense, maintain the social stability.

Fifth, continue the administrative reforms, and prevent corruption, making favorable conditions for business production.

2. The action plan of The State Bank of Viet Nam

Measuring the impact of the global financial crisis, it is forecasted that global economic growth in 2009 will be lower than 2008’s, the developed countries may be in recession, emerging and developing economies may slow down or grow at low level; savings, investment and rotating capitals may decrease or grow at a lower level than the previous years. That situation has negatively affected our country’s growth, especially banking sector in 2009. The State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) has defined banking sector’s targets, orientations and duties in 2009 as follows:

Banking industry focuses on building and advancing law regulations of banks in accordance with development orientation, strategy of banking sector, and pathway of implementing international commitments in banking field: Improving the projects of the State Bank law, the Credit Institutions law, the Deposit Insurance law and the Supervision of safety in banking activities law; Revising and advancing regulations of foreign exchange, safety, structure and organization of credit institutions;

Monetary policy closely follows the target of preventing economic downturn, controlling inflation at low level, stabilizing monetary market, ensuring safety of banking system from the global financial changes. To that end, SBV governs flexibly, comprehensively monetary policy’s tools with a relevant combination of exchange rates and interest rates; enhances cooperation with other ministries to ensure consistency among macroeconomic policies, especially between monetary policy and fiscal policy; enhances the statistical and forecasting job to react timely to domestic and international economic monetary developments; ensures liquidity of credit institutions;

Solidly developing and enhancing the efficiency of credit institutions to get maximum mobilization of free capital and efficient allocation of the capital for investment in production. Directing credit institutions to transfer credit structure, focusing capital on production, export, agriculture and rural development, small and medium enterprises; improving operation capacity and competitiveness of domestic credit institutions;

Renewing and improving banking supervision with law framework on supervision, banking operation safety, organization consolidation, and training for banking supervisors;

Developing banking IT and non-cash payment, better satisfying social demand in banking products and services.

Enhancing international cooperation, raising Viet Nam stature in global financial and monetary community.

Promoting information and propaganda in banking activities to have the social support to monetary and banking activities as well as create social channel of supervision to banking system activities.

VI. AGRIBANK – THE BANK PLAYS A LEADING ROLE IN STABLIZING MONETARY MARKET AND IS CONSIDERED AS AN EFFECTIVE MEASURE OF THE GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE BANK OF VIETNAM IN IMPLEMENTING FINANCIAL AND MONETARY POLICIES

Viet Nam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRIBANK) is the largest State-owned commercial bank in Viet Nam, the number one firm in Viet Nam (ranked by UNDP in 2007), playing a decisive and important role in agricultural and rural financial market. As of 31st March 2009, AGRIBANK’s total assets reached USD 24 billion; total funds resource was USD 23.2 billion, 93% of which was self-mobilized funds; the branch network consists of more than 2,200 branches and transaction offices nation-wide with nearly 34,000 staffs. The total funds providing to the agriculture and rural areas exceeded USD 11.8 billion, accounting for 71% of the total outstanding loans.

Along with banking activities, AGRIBANK currently has 8 independent subsidiaries operating in many fields like securities, gold and silver, financial leasing, insurance. With the advantage of a wide network, AGRIBANK can provide it products and services to all types of customers, especially the farming households including those in the remote and ethnic minorities’ areas. AGRIBANK has a customer base of 10 million households (out of the total 12 million in the country), 500 farms, over 100 cooperatives and more than 30,000 enterprises.

In the year 2008 and the first five months of 2009, in the context of complicated changes, even contrary movements are occurring to the world’s economy in general and Viet Nam’s in particular, AGRIBANK has maintained its stability and development as well as its leading role in stabilizing the financial market, making a considerable contribution into the inflation curbing efforts in the first half of 2008 and economic downward prevention in second half of 2008 and early months of 2009.

In early 2008, AGRIBANK implemented various solutions in order to stave off inflation, stabilize the macro economy and ensure the socio-security and sustainable development. In early months, the Government and the State Bank had to diminish money from circulation for the inflation curbing purpose. The difficulty in mobilizing funds commonly tend to lead to the cut down in credit allocation for agriculture, rural and farmers due to the low profit, high cost and risk of investment in these fields. Nevertheless, AGRIBANK was resolute in reducing investment in urban areas, real estate loans, big projects and allocating USD 1.35 billion on loans for severe and damaging cold reparation, cat fish and rice purchasing for export, coffee buying and processing.

Since the forth quarter of 2008, involving in the implementation of policies dealing with economic recession, AGRIBANK has broadened its lending at low interest rate. AGRIBANK has accepted the profit decrease of USD 117 million to reduce the lending interest rate from 20.5%/year in midyear to 10.5%/year at the end of the year through 12 consecutive times of interest cutting and instantly applied new interest rate to the households’ existing high interest rate contracts.

AGRIBANK has effectuated the Government’s “Demand stimulus” program by providing interest rate subsidized loans to individuals and institutions who borrow capital for production and business. From February to June 2nd 2009, The Bank has funded the program with USD 5.5 billion, accounting for 51% of AGRIBANK total turnover including USD 2.9 billion for farmers, agriculture and rural area, 2.4 billion of which is for households.

Besides, AGRIBANK gives the priority to fund allocation for agriculture and rural areas as well as customers who have export operation, meeting the capital demand of the committed projects and promoting consumption lending. AGRIBANK also implements the policy on incentive lending to exporting customers having forward USD selling contract with AGRIBANK. Generally, AGRIBANK has played an important role in stabilizing the macro-economy and preventing economic slowdown in Viet Nam.

With the orientation of developing AGRIBANK into a modern, powerful group, gradually carrying out the equitization process, reinforcing financial capacity and promoting trademark value, reforming agriculture and rural restructure, expanding and improving quality as well as competitive and integration capacity of banking-services, the bank’s operation maintains stable and comprehensive. After 21 years of development, from the youngest bank among state owned commercial banks, AGRIBANK has become the largest enterprise in Viet Nam, setting up a certain position to the customers and progressive prestige to partners. AGRIBANK brand-name is more and more mentioned domestically, regionally and internationally.

VI. CONCLUSION

Vietnamese Government has always had the complete insight in the difficulties and follow the developments of the international economy in order to have the timely, precise and synchronous measures to limit the serious effect of the economic crisis and seize the opportunity to uphold the country growth potential and promote economic development; continueing to use the market-based tools, policies to operate the economy, try to step up the deployment of innovation and renovation measures; continueing to affirm the renovation and international integration process, being patient to develop the cooperation between countries in the region to overcome the difficulties. Vietnamese Government highly appreciates the contribution of international community on Viet Nam’s renovation and economic development over the past years as well as in the future.

We would like to thank APRACA’s Executive Committee for organizing this meeting. We wish you good health and hope that the meeting will be successful./.