Vietnam PM Asks to Tighten Control on Gold, Dollar Trading
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has requested the State Bank of Vietnam to tighten surveillance over gold and dollar trading activities across the country, including operations of gold trading centers and foreign exchange desks.
This is among four requirements by the PM on December 3 to help stabilize macro-economy and boost domestic business and production, the government said on its website.
Dung also ordered the central bank to promptly stop and inspect all entities violating the State regulations on gold and forex trading, which can cause huge losses to the country’s economy and domestic monetary market.
The SBV Governor Nguyen Van Giau said early Dec that the central bank had submitted to the government two measures to deal with speculation on the commercial gold trading centers.
The first measure is simply to prohibit the gold exchanges because they do not benefit the society while the rest will permit them to continue operation but require participants to provide 100% collateral for loans instead of 7% as currently required by the floors.
Vietnam now has 20 gold trading centers and up to 70 tons of gold is daily traded at each big floor.
Despite a lot of complains about the gold trading floors, none of them has been forced to stop operations, because of the continued arguments among government agencies about who should manage them.
Some argued that because gold is a kind of commodity, gold trading floors must fall under the Commercial Law. This means that the Ministry of Industry and Trade would manage all commodity exchanges, including gold floors.
Meanwhile, SBV has built up a dossier that argues that gold trading is a financial business and gold floors must be established and run by commercial banks. (chinhphu.vn, Vietnam Economic Times)
Vietnamese
