Banks paying stingier interest rates to depositing customers

The highest rate any Vietnamese bank is now paying out as interest on deposits is 9.5% a year.

PGBank slashed the rate by 1 percentage point.

Early last month, some 20 banks offered depositors interest rates above 9% a year. Now, only half of them haven’t cut payouts.

Among 35 banks surveyed by VnExpress, the highest deposit interest rate as of March 4 was 9.5% a year, listed by such banks as SCB, BaoVietBank, Kienlongbank and NamABank.

Other private banks are offering annual interest rates of 8-9%.

There are four lenders that offer interest rates of below 8%, namely Vietcombank, BIDV, Agribank and CBBank.

Deposit interest rates are expected to drop further in the second half of this year.

The general director of a private bank told VnExpress that finance insiders have been predicting that the U.S. Federal Reserve may hike interest rates once or twice in the near future before lowering them.

In Vietnam, the deposit interest rate race has slowed down recently after strategic moves by the central bank.

The bank general director VnExpress interviewed said lending interest rates will also go down as the demand for credit comes down from the peaks it hit last year as higher production orders are expected to return and experts predict that the dormant real estate market will also soon recover.

Many banks charge on average 3-4 percentage points more on loans than they pay out on deposits.