Vietnam's foreign reserves stand at 63.5 bln USD in late 2018

HANOI, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- By the end of 2018, Vietnam's foreign reserves had remained at 63.5 billion U.S. dollars, helping its central bank stabilize the foreign exchange rate, local media reported on Friday.

The State Bank of Vietnam, which has so far this year bought more than one billion U.S. dollars from commercial banks to build up the nation's foreign currency reserves, could purchase another 1-2 billion U.S. dollars in the next few weeks, daily newspaper Vietnam News quoted the central bank's governor as saying.

Vietnamese analysts said the central bank's current zero percent interest rate on U.S. dollar deposits encourages U.S. dollar holders to exchange their money to Vietnamese dong to get higher interest, helping the central bank manage the forex market.

They anticipated that the central bank would depreciate Vietnamese dong against U.S. dollar slightly by some 1.5-2 percent this year to support the government's targets of increasing exports and stabilizing macro-economic indicators.

Vietnam net purchased over 6 billion U.S. dollars last year to raise its foreign exchange reserves, the central bank said in January. The bank also said it would take effective measures this year to manage the forex and gold markets, consolidate the forex reserves, curb the dollarization and enhance trust in the Vietnamese dong.