Governor of the State Bank Nguyen Van Binh is a newly appointed minister, but he has to deal with old problems – high interest rates and weak banking system.

No one can give an exact answer to the question about the business result of Petrolimex, the biggest petroleum product distributor now in the Vietnamese market. And no one can understand why it is so difficult to clarify if Petrolimex makes profit or takes loss.

Four HCM City-based commercial banks borrowed 1475 billion dong from another bank, but they have been repeatedly asking for the delay of debt payment. Feeling worried about the insolvency, lenders now ask borrowers to show assets to mortgage for the loans – the thing which has never been seen on the interbank market.

The trade deficit continued its down-turn, falling to 8.9 billion USD in the first 11 months of 2011, a year-on-year decrease of 1.7 billion USD, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.