Vietnam likely to keep dong strong this year

ANZ Vietnam’s profits fell 75 percent in the first half of this year following the sale of its retail arm to Shinhan Bank.

Vietnam’s central bank has to engage in a delicate balancing act as the U.S.-China trade war exerts inflationary pressures on the dong.

The central bank may have escaped the impacts of Brexit without exhausting its foreign reserves.

China's central bank on Monday set the value of the yuan currency at a more than five-year low against the U.S. dollar, according to the national foreign exchange market, in a pattern of weakness in anticipation of higher U.S. interest rates.

Vietnam's decision to change the mechanism for setting the dong’s daily reference rate is a step forward for the Southeast Asian country as it allows market forces to play a greater role in determining the exchange rate, said Bui Quoc Dung, head of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s Monetary Policy Department in an interview with VnExpress.

Vietnam’s shift to a more flexible exchange rate regime “is the best way at this point” as it would help improve the country’s “relatively low” foreign exchange reserves, said Sandeep Mahajan, lead economist of the World Bank office in Vietnam on Monday.