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Tran Xuan Huy, General Director of Sacombank, said that the bank’s overseas remittance service company (SBR) paid 800 million dollars in kieu hoi to clients in the first six months of the year, an increase of 30 percent over the same period of the last year. The high growth rate has made the company more self-confident in its business in 2011--the company has set up the profit target of 10 billion dong in 2011, much higher than the profit of 3-4 billion dong in previous years.
Meanwhile, Western Union, a subsidiary of Asia Commercial Bank ACB, has reported the remittance revenue increasing by eight percent in the first six months of 2011 in comparison with the same period of the last year. Earlier this year, ACB instructed Western Union to obtain a 10 percent growth rate in 2011.
“Kieu hoi will be more profuse in the last months of the year, because it is the high kieu hoi season. Overseas Vietnamese have the habit of remitting money to their relatives in Vietnam in the months to help the relatives to celebrate Tet,” said Tran Cong Binh, Director of Western Union of ACB on Dau tu.
Anticipating the upward trend of kieu hoi in the post-crisis period, Dong A Bank’s Overseas Remittance Service Company is also self-confident enough to set up the target of obtaining the kieu hoi turnover increasing by 20 percent over 2010. The company also hopes to continue leading the remittance service companies in Vietnam.
In 2010, the company paid 1.2 billion dollars in kieu hoi in Vietnam, an increase of 20 percent over 2009. To date, it has had more than 60 foreign partners in more than 150 countries and territories.
Meanwhile, StoxPlus has reported that the overseas remittance services alone brought the pretax profit of five billion dong to SBR.
According to the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Van Giau, Vietnam now has 55,000 people working in foreign countries, who can earn 1.8-2 billion dollars. The people regularly remit money to their relatives in Vietnam to feed their families, and the overseas Vietnamese are the big source of kieu hoi.
Also, there are also the Vietnamese people who have been settling for many years in foreign countries and regularly remitting money to their relatives in Vietnam. It is estimated that the minimum volume of kieu hoi remitted to Vietnam every year reaches 6.5 billion dollars.
Kieu hoi always plays a very important role in the national economy which helps ease the deficit of the current balance and it is considered a source of foreign currencies to the nation. Kieu hoi also helps Vietnam minimize risks in mobilizing capital and ease the reliance on foreign capital sources. Therefore, attracting more kieu hoi is one of the priority tasks for the banking system.
Commercial banks have recently launched attractive services and promotion campaigns which aim to attract kieu hoi. Ficombank, for example, has signed a cooperation agreement in providing remittance services with Remit2Vietnam (R2V, Australia). R2V will serve as the unit that receives money remitted to Vietnam from the Vietnamese people who live, work and study in the US, Australia and Canada.
According to VnExpress, Vietcombank has launched a promotion campaign applied to the clients, who receive kieu hoi remitted via Moneygram channel. The program will last until September 30.
Under the program, the clients, who get 2000 dollars and more per transaction, will get voucher for purchasing petrol or purchasing goods at supermarkets, or the gifts with similar values.
Meanwhile, SCB is running a program which lasts until August 31, 2011, under which clients will get gifts from the bank, while the bank will accept to buy the kieu hoi at the prices higher than the prices quoted by the bank.
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