Interest rates have decreased but businesses still find it difficult to borrow capital due to mortgage barriers and procedures.

Although interest rates have been reduced many times by the State Bank, in reality, small and medium enterprises still have difficulty accessing capital. Photo: Hai Nguyen

At the New Economic Forum - VNEF 2025, Dr. Nguyen Van Than - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises assessed that for the small and medium enterprise (SME) community, the participation of enterprises and FDI investors plays an extremely important role.

FDI not only brings abundant financial resources, but also serves as a channel to spread knowledge, technology and management experience to domestic small and medium enterprises. This is a force that can become a fulcrum and a partner for Vietnamese enterprises to learn and improve their competitiveness.

"It is important that small and medium enterprises must make more efforts to increase the rate of participation in the supply chain and supporting industries in the ecosystem of foreign enterprises. Even in very simple production stages in the production chain of FDI enterprises, Vietnamese enterprises are still unable to participate, leaving this part of the work to be done by foreign enterprises, while Vietnamese enterprises are fully capable of undertaking it" - Dr. Nguyen Van Than proposed.

To resolve difficulties for small and medium enterprises, Dr. Nguyen Van Than recommended that regarding tax policy, enterprises with revenue under 1 billion VND should have a more preferential tax payment mechanism. Benefits from the institution will encourage more enterprises to participate in the market, thereby creating a spillover effect for the economy.

Regarding access to capital, although interest rates have been reduced many times by the State Bank, in reality, small and medium enterprises still find it very difficult to access loans from commercial banks, due to many barriers regarding mortgages and procedures.

"It is necessary to change the mindset that credit is the main thing and mortgage is only secondary, and at the same time improve the credit guarantee mechanism so that funds can really expand lending services. At the same time, it is necessary to innovate the lending model, take advantage of digital banks and digital financial applications to provide capital directly, quickly, and at low cost," Mr. Than suggested.

Regarding start-up and management support, Dr. Nguyen Van Than recommended that the State should have preferential policies for businesses preparing to be established. At the same time, there should be policies to enhance management training and financial support to help small and medium-sized enterprises grow sustainably.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Nguyen Viet Cuong, Financial Expert, Vice President of KAFI Securities Company affirmed that capital is always an important issue for any business, both small and medium enterprises and large enterprises.

Mr. Nguyen Viet Cuong said that one of the proposals to help small and medium enterprises access capital is to form a credit rating system. The credit rating system will determine whether small and medium enterprises can access capital more easily or more difficultly.

"When a national credit rating system for small and medium-sized enterprises is established, capital providers can easily look at businesses with AAA or BB credit ratings to assess how businesses should access loans and how they should perform.

"With a transparent and effective national credit rating system built specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises, the opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to access different capital sources will be extremely large, creating motivation for them to increase their competitiveness in the new era of the country," Mr. Cuong expected.

Source: https://baoquangninh.vn/lai-suat-giam-nhung-doanh-nghiep-van-kho-vay-von-vi-rao-can-the-chap-va-thu-tuc-3378778.html