Dollar reaches record rate at nearly VND24,500

The State Bank of Vietnam widened the dong’s daily trading range to 5% on either side of the fixing rate from 3%, effective Monday, it said in a statement on its website on the same day.

Lender Eximbank sold the greenback for VND24,420, and Vietcombank for VND24,480.

In the free market, the U.S. dollar continued to increase by VND190 to VND24,520.

The central bank sold dollars worth at least $20 billion in the first nine months of to keep the forex market stable, thereby reducing Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves to $90 billion.

The central bank set the dong reference rate at a record low of 23,586 per dollar on Monday. The dong has room to weaken further to 24,700 per dollar, Bloomberg quoted Trinh Nguyen, a senior economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong as saying.

The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the greenback’s strength against six major currencies, firmed at 113.12.