In the summary of comments on the Draft Circular guiding credit institutions and foreign bank branches to lend in the agricultural and rural sectors, the issue of debt restructuring deadlines has created much debate.
The draft stipulates that "the time to restructure the repayment period for the same objective cause, specific force majeure does not exceed 12 months for short-term debt and 36 months for medium and long-term debt". According to the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), this regulation is equivalent to an additional maximum of one production and business cycle of short-term debt; and equivalent to the maximum time that can be restructured according to Circular 53/2024/TT-NHNN.
The Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB) believes that it needs to be expanded. In the document, MB proposed: The maximum repayment period for short-term debts is 03 years; for medium and long-term debts is 05 years. The actual time is assessed by TCTD and determined to be suitable for the recovery ability and specific plan of the customer to ensure that the support policy can reach the affected customer".
MB argued: Damages caused by natural disasters causing soil pollution can take 2-3 years or more to improve the situation; damaged houses/farms can have a recovery time of 13 years, even 5 years to restore infrastructure and production facilities. Psychological recovery for people/business can be from 38 years.
Meanwhile, Agribank requested the SBV to clarify how to determine the deadline when customers encounter many consecutive force majeure events. According to the proposal, specific regulations are needed to unify credit institutions.
Responding, the SBV said: The restructuring period is determined according to the maturity date of each principal and interest balance with a structure of +12 months. For example, When a customer encounters another objective cause of force majeure, a credit institution is allowed to continue to restructure debt to extend the repayment period, the maturity date is determined to January 1, 2026.
However, the petition to extend the deadline to 5 years was not accepted. The State Bank explained: The objective and force majeure reasons are very diverse, determined by credit institutions and customers, so the Circular needs to control maximum time. For MB's example, on natural disasters and epidemics on a large scale, currently according to the provisions of Decree 55/2015/ND-CP, debt suspension is also supported with a maximum period of 02 years. Therefore, the Department reserves this regulation in the draft Circular.
