Individual investors are increasingly buying real estate bonds and land rather than depositing money in banks, which have reduced interest rates on deposits.
Techcombank has again eased dong deposit interest rates by 0.1-0.4 percent. The current interest rates are 2.55-2.9 percent per annum for one-month deposits, 2.75-3.1 percent for 3-month, 4.2-4.7 percent for six-month and 4.8-5.2 percent for 12-month deposits.
Vietcombank has also slashed deposit interest rates by 0.2 percent for all deposits with the term of less than 12 months. The interest rates are now 3.3 percent per annum for one-month, 3.6 percent for 3-month and 4.2 percent for 6-month deposits.
Meanwhile, HD Bank has cut interest rates by 0.15 percent for 1-6-month deposits and 0.4 percent for the 6-month or longer-term deposits. Nam A Bank now pays 3.95 percent per annum for less-than-6-month deposits, 6.3 percent for 6-month and 7 percent for 12-month deposits.
The most common interest rates are 0.1-0.2 percent for demand and less-than-1-month deposits, 2.55-4.1 percent for 1-6 month deposits, 4-6.4 percent for 6-12 month and 6.0-7.2 percent for over-12-month deposits.
Online deposits have quoted interest rates of 0.1-7.85 percent. SCB pays the highest interest rate, 7.85 percent for 24-month deposits.
Analysts believe that deposit interest rates will decrease by another 0.5-1 percent because of banks’ high liquidity, while credit demand is low because of Covid-19.
However, for the majority of people, bank deposits still bring profits higher than the inflation rate. Some small joint stock banks pay 7.5 percent per annum in interest rate for less-than-15-month deposits. If depositing money online, one can get up to 7.85 percent per annum.
Because the national economy remains seriously affected by Covid-19, people are trying to maintain their asset value and profits.
Some individual investors are seeking higher profits by injecting money into corporate bonds, ignoring the warnings about risks.
An investor said he believes that bonds issued by large real estate firms that run huge projects have low risks. The firms offer an interest rate of 9 percent per annum for 2-3-year bonds, which is higher than bank deposit interest rates.
He said that enterprises have stockholder equity of tens or hundreds of trillion of dong, so the issuance of several trillion dong worth of bonds won’t create virtual assets and they are capable of paying debts.
Commercial banks are also buying trillions dong worth of real estate bonds.
Meanwhile, another investor said investors would never incur a loss injecting money into land.
“The real estate market is quiet at this moment, but the land price will increase in the future when the economy bounces back after Covid-19,” he said.
This article was originally published in VNA
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Source: Vietnam Insider