Vietnam’s Central Bank Says It’s Willing to Intervene to Calm FX Market

(Bloomberg) --

The State Bank of Vietnam says it has enough foreign currency resources to intervene in the foreign-exchange market if necessary, according to a posting on its website.

Although the forex market has been under pressure from the novel coronavirus outbreak, the exchange rate fluctuations in the domestic market have not been big and are following the global financial market, said the posting, which cited Pham Thanh Ha, head of the central bank’s monetary policy department.

Vietnam’s trade balance of goods reached a surplus of $1.82 billion in the first two months of the year and has a surplus of $880 million in March, according to Ha.

With such available foreign currency potential, the central bank is willing to sell dollars at a price lower than its current price to calm the monetary market and maintain Vietnam’s macro-economic stability, Ha said.

The Vietnam dong weakened to a record low of 23,552 per dollar as of 4:25 pm local time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the free market, the dong traded as weak as 23,900 today at money changers, according to NDH news website.

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