A number of banks in Vietnam have announced plans to auction off their collateral assets in an attempt to speed up bad debt recovery.

On the website of Vietinbank Debt Management and Asset Exploitation Co Ltd (Vietinbank), since the beginning of this month, Vietinbank has put six properties up for sale worth at least 223 billion dong ($9.6 million). This value is based on the initial selling price of the auctioned assets.

The highest starting price is 190 billion dong for the land use rights and ownership of houses and other properties attached to a 3.23ha land situated at the Can Tho Centre complex.

Other properties on sale include 2ha land plot use right at the Tam Hiep industrial park and port logistics at 10 billion dong and nearly 90ha of rubber trees and attached buildings in Kon Tum province’s Dak To district at more than 7.8 billion dong.

A collateral asset including 30 land use rights and land-attached assets with an area of more than 5ha in Hoa Binh province’s Ky Son district, will also be auctioned to handle debt worth 105 billion dong of Viet Thai Steel JSC.

By the end of March, total non-performing loans of Vietinbank increased 56 per cent compared to the start of the year, driving the bad debt ratio to 1.83 per cent from 1.16 per cent.

Since April, Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) has also put up many properties for sale to resolve bad debts.

Last week, BIDV’s Quang Tri branch put up four assets pledged as security for loans for sale with starting price of 88 billion dong.

This month, BIDV also auctioned collateral assets of Truong Phat Investment Trading and Services JSC. The company’s debts as of February reached nearly 105 billion dong. The collateral asset is the land use right of 2,832sqm land in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh district, being auctioned for at least 100.5 billion dong.

Earlier, BIDV’s Gia Dinh branch auctioned 65 apartments in the Era Town project in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 7 with the starting price ranging from 2.1 to 5.5 billion dong per apartment.

Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) is also selling buildings, a sports complex and land in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Tri Dong district with the starting price of more than six trillion dong.

Adverse impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have pushed many companies to their limits and forced banks to put their debts up for auction.

But as the real estate market has been in a difficult period since the latter half of last year, many high-value properties have struggled to find buyers.

Some of BIDV’s mortgages have been sold for the third time but have yet to be sold while assets auctioned by Sacombank could not be transferred despite the bank has reduced the selling price.

VIET NAM NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK