Having officially appeared in 1997, a period of 13 years is quite long, but in comparison with businesses in Vietnam, leasing service – a kind of mid & long-term credit – which is formerly established and being utilised for a long time on over the world, is still not quite familiar in local market. The major cause is due to the newly opened economy of Vietnam which is not lasted long, meanwhile the credit transaction habit of organisations with banks or other smilar DFIs has not been changed as expected. However, having admitted as ever, this kind of habit during a long period was still remained beside several factors such as: leasing interest rate is not quite interesting, leasing service in reality is still facing some barriers in related policies that are needed to adjust or enhance to be fit with the developing trend of society… A majority of leasing information, or utility that leasing company provided service to clients is still not quite sufficient to update and support.
In fact, most of clients using leasing service are currently derived from the recommendation source of “its owned mother bank”, which founded most of recent leasing companies, and from the support of suppliers of machines, equipment, vehicles…etc. Clients coming from by themselves because of the reputation, operation excellence, brands which are well promoted by advertisements are really rare. A lots of companies are not quite comprehensive with the credit basis of leasing service, or not oversee its effectiveness and its benefits.
According to a research result of MPDF and state economy institute conducting in 2006, it showed that most of funding source has purely come from its owned hands. This limited the scope development of its business and lacked opportunities to approach new global advanced technology to improve its product quality and competitiveness in the market, whilst the quantity of SMEs has been accounted for 80% of total active enterprises in Vietnam. Another highlight is that through this survey, there were almost 50% companies lacking information about leasing service. Therefore, whenever they have demand in upgrading new technology, purchase new equipment, they still preferred to find banks to get credit even though they could have faced tight procedures and harsh credit condition. It was important to foresee that if leasing industry would like to increase its leasing outstanding debts and affirm its reputation as the most effective credit channel of the economy, leasing companies should cope with more challenges, in which the marketing and propaganda should be well taken into account.
Recently, there are 13 active leasing companies in Vietnam and 08 of them are subsidiary company of commercial banks with chartered capital funding from its mother bank. The rest consists of 01 joint-venture company, 01 subsidiary unit of Industrial Marine Vietnma Group and 03 FDI companies. Leasing companies are mainly located its head quarter in Ho Chi Minh city. By the end of 2008, the leasing outstanding debts gained 13,969 billion VND, increased 4,000 billion Vnd, increased 34% versus 2007 and multiplied 17 times versus 2000. This proved a stimulated success of leasing companies.
After 10 years of sustainable development, thanks to the immense network of Sacombank, Sacombank-SBL has opened its branch in Nothern region in Hanoi and currently service over 250 clients with trust in our leasing service. Besides, it was proud for us to claim that we were the only leasing company in Vietnam to receive the trust and funding support from DFIs like FMO of Netherlands, Norfund of Norway and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
