VietNamNet Bridge – By 5 pm (Hanoi time) of December 23, the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group (Vinashin) still had not paid $60 million of debt, the first due installment of the package worth $600 million that Vinashin borrowed in 2008, according to Saigon Tiep Thi newspaper.

According to international practice, Vinashin has three days of grace since December 20, the day that it had to pay the debt.

Earlier, some foreign sources said that Vinashin sent a letter of announcement to say that it would pay the interest within a short period of time but it didn’t say whether the group would pay the original debt of $60 million or not.

Speaking to the local media last week, Vinashin’s chair Nguyen Ngoc Su said that the group asked creditors’ permission to delay the payment until December 2011.

By the end of December 23, no deal had been reached between Vinashin and its creditors.

Experts said that according to international practice, in case the debtor doesn’t pay the debt, the creditor has the right to claim back the entire loan immediately. In the case of Vinashin, the group has to pay the original loan in ten installments, $60 million each.

According to Saigon Tiep Thi, the creditors didn’t express their opinion yet but they understood that they had made a mistake when they thought that the Vietnamese state would help Vinashin. If the Vietnamese government pays the debt for Vinashin, it will break its WTO commitments.

After the Vinashin scandal, international investors will tighten conditions for their loans to Vietnamese businesses which will force Vietnamese businesses to operate more effectively.

VEF