Prime Minister: The violations that the banking industry has suffered are extremely painful.

The task of strengthening the quality and ethics of staff to avoid violations like the recent one was emphasized by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to the entire banking industry at the summary conference on January 9.

The head of the Government acknowledged that the recent violations were "extremely painful" and requested the State Bank to continue to improve its inspection and supervision capacity to promptly detect and minimize violations. These actions, according to him, are to increase people's trust in the system.

After the Government Inspectorate pointed out a number of limitations and shortcomings in the inspection and supervision work in June, according to the Prime Minister, this activity at the State Bank has made much progress. However, the head of the Government said that "it still does not meet the requirements" when the ability to detect and warn early, prevent and stop risks in inspection and supervision activities of banks is still limited.

"The entire system needs to pay more attention to the quality of staff, psychology, and ethics of the team to minimize violations. I believe that with good supervision, no violations will occur in 2018," said the Prime Minister.

In fact, in 2017, the State Bank had many innovations in inspection and supervision work when continuously issuing warnings and recommendations on mobilization interest rates, credit quality of BT, BOT projects, cross-ownership situation... In 2017, there were 52 warning documents to credit institutions for correction and improvement.

Among them, many violations and potential risks, according to the State Bank, have been discovered, such as timely warnings that some banks have a situation of using short-term capital for medium and long-term loans up to 40-50%; some banks have a high real estate lending rate...

Also at the Conference, the Prime Minister recalled a number of "records" achieved in socio-economic development, including the contributions of the banking industry.such as foreign exchange reserves reaching 53 billion USD. He said that the banking sector has helped to fulfill the "dream" of foreign exchange reserves reaching 50 billion USD by 2020 (equivalent to about 14-15 weeks of imports) and highly appreciated the reasonable exchange rate and monetary policies that maintained the stability of the currency market; continued to control inflation at 3.53%, lower than the target set by the National Assembly.

Acknowledging the banking sector's efforts to reduce lending interest rates in 2017, the Prime Minister suggested that banks need to calculate to continue reducing interest rates by another 0.5% per year for the common good and national interest.

"Banks need to calculate appropriate interest rate reductions, across the board, not just at a few banks. At the same time, the banking industry needs to expand credit while improving quality, focusing credit on priority sectors, especially the manufacturing and processing sector, small and medium enterprises, and exports...", said Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

In addition, to keep up with the new trends of the 4th industrial revolution and effectively integrate with the international banking system, the Prime Minister requested to promote the development of modern banking products and services. He also wanted the industry to focus on ensuring security and safety, avoiding risks and negative aspects of digital technology. At the same time, the Government representative requested the State Bank to proactively implement a project to perfect the legal framework to strictly manage virtual assets, cryptocurrencies, and virtual currencies.