State Bank eyes black market in dollars

Hanoi (VNA) - The street price of the US dollar has begun to rise despite the
central bank's warning that it will investigate and tighten the monitoring of the
currency market.

Gold too has rebounded as speculators began testing both markets.

The US currency returned to its upward trend with a 30 VND increase to
18,210-18,230 VND on April 22 after two successive days of losses of 50-80 VND per
dollar.

The central bank listed the interbank rate at 16,937 VND per dollar on April 23 - up
1 VND per dollar compared with the previous day.

The commercial banks all listed their buying, transferring and selling price at
17,784 VND per dollar - the upper limit of the official trading band. State Bank's
Governor Nguyen Van Giau told the English-language daily Vietnam News: "There has
been speculation and accumulation on the forex market of late and this has made the
dollar increasingly volatile."

The governor again noted that the trade surplus of 1.65 billion USD at the end of
the first quarter had also promoted a dollar inflow.

But banks complained that they were in short of US dollar because enterprises that
earn their revenue in the currency do not want to sell it to the banks.

The dollar depreciated against the euro globally after Credit Suisse Group AG
announced a return to profit at the end of the first quarter, spurring demand for
higher-yielding currencies.

Domestic gold prices increased by 70,000 VND (3.95 USD) per tael against April 22's
closing prices to about 19.6-19.7 million VND (1,107-1,112 USD) per tael on April
23.-Enditem