UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF ACCESS TO FORMAL CREDIT BY SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN VIETNAM By TRAN NGUYEN THUY BAO ANH MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS Ho Chi Minh City, April, 2014 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M. IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF ACCESS TO FORMAL CREDIT BY SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Development Economics By TRAN NGUYEN THUY BAO ANH Academic supervisor Dr. PHAM KHANH NAM Ho Chi Minh City, April, 2014 DECLARATION I declare that: "Determinants of access to formal credit by small and medium enterprises in Vietnam" is my own work; it has not been submitted to any degree at other universities. I confirm that I have made all possible effort and applied all knowledge for finishing this thesis to the best of my ability.
Ho Chi Minh City, April 2014 TRAN NGUYEN THUY BAO ANH i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not have been accomplished without the kind assistance and enthusiastic guidance of several individuals who have in one way or another contributed toward to the formation and fulfillment of this paper. First of all, I would like to express our deepest gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Pham Khanh Nam for invaluable comments, guidance and engagement through the learning process of the thesis. I would like to express my special thanks Dr.
Truong Dang Thuy for his comment and advice about thesis research design. Another special thank goes to Nguyen Quang, from whom I have a lot of things to learn. I am thankful for Phan Thach Truc for all your kind help during my time in class 17. I sincerely would like to thank all my loved classmates in class MDE17 and staff in the VNP office, who always give me their restless assistance when I was in trouble.
Last but not least, I must express my most gratitude to my family members for all the kind understanding and spiritual support. ii ABSTRACT The shortage of capital and difficulties in accessing bank loans were the most challenging issues for SMEs. According to a survey of SMEs Development Department - Ministry of Planning and Investment, only one-third of SMEs can access to bank funds; one-third has obstacles to reach the loans; and one-third cannot access. Among businesses in VN which could not access to bank loans, the 80% does not meet loan conditions The descriptive statistic result shows that State Owned Commercial Bank (SOCB) is the most important formal source for SMEs.
The banks appreciate the Certificate of Land Use Right or housing which can be used as collateral for the most important formal loans. The enterprises which applied for formal loans may be have problems getting loans. The main reasons are difficulties in obtaining clearance from bank authorities and lack of collateral. Enterprises in credit constrained group have the option of accessing to the informal credit market.
The proportion of credit constrained group applied for informal credit is always higher than non- credit constrained. These proportions have tended to increase for both groups. Asymmetric information is the main theory of the research to classify the factors determining access to credit of SMEs into three main groups: (i) a grouped factor representing for Owner’s characteristics comprises education, ethnicity, (ii) a grouped factor representing for firm’s characteristics consists of firm age, firm size, type of firm, (iii) a grouped factor representing for relationship between banks and borrowers includes previously borrowed, overdue debt. Based on the data set of 1427 enterprise from “Characteristics of the Vietnamese business environment: evidence from a SME survey in 2009”, the research has applied probit model to identify determinants of access to formal credit by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.
The result shows that Education (negative), Employee, Equipment, Liabilities and Borrow (positive) which are significant on probabilities of access to credit. The research finds that 50% of enterprises have probability of access to credit higher than 75. The paper finds that Ethnicity, Year, From, Revenue, Ap, Ar, Overdue debt do not contribute to credit access of SMEs and are not significant at 10% level. iii In conclusion, the formal credit market plays a very important role for capital of SMEs.
However, access to this source is still a challenge for SMEs. The barriers, difficulties in accessing credit from formal sources have forced the SMEs to involve in the informal credit market. iv CONTENT DECLARATION. v LIST OF FIGURES.
vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .Organization of the study. 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Theory of monopoly .2 Theory of asymmetric information .3 BARRIERS TO FINANCE FOR SMEs .1 International empirical studies .2 Vietnamese empirical studies. 15 CHAPTER 3: DATA AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Background of SME Financing in Vietnam. 28 CHAPTER 4: EMPIRICAL RESULTS.
34 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATION .3 Limitations and directions for further studies. xi vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Monopoly & competitive markets .2: Access to credit: determinants and channels of influence .1: Capital for investment of SMEs .2: The main purpose of investment of SMEs .3: Problems getting the bank loan of SMEs .4: Why don’t Enterprises apply for loans? (%) .5: Source of formal loan .6: Type of Collateral. 27 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Definition for Small and Medium Enterprises in Viet Nam .2 Summary of empirical studies .1 Access to Credit .2: Informal Loans and Credit Constraints (%).1: The reason Why enterprises did not apply for formal loan .2: Access to credit .3: Summary statistics of explanatory variables .6: Detail of Pr(access) .7: Marginal effects at means .8: Average Marginal Effects. 42 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.Problem statement The shortage of capital and difficulties in accessing bank loans were the most challenging issues for SMEs.
According to a survey of SMEs Development Department - Ministry of Planning and Investment, only one-third of SMEs can access to bank funds; one- third has obstacles to reach the loans; and one-third can not access. Among businesses in VN which could not access to bank loans, the 80% does not meet loan conditions. For example, in Quang Binh, only about 30% of SMEs access to loans banks and interest rates up to 25%. In the crisis, bank credit for small firms is reduced more than bank credit for the large ones (Gertler and Gilchrist, 1994; Gilchrist and Zakrajsek, 1995).
The main reason is that small firms are more dependent on bank credit as they hardly have access to alternative financing sources, such as financial markets and money markets. Cao Sy Kiem, chairman of the Viet Nam Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Association, said lack of funds and difficulties in access to capital is the central difficulty of SMEs. Because of small own capital, 90% of SMEs loans for business, of which 70% is bank loans. However, SMEs find difficulty to access loans, due to small scale production, weak business management, lack of collateral, etc.
Survey of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) indicated that lack of capital is one of the biggest reasons that forced businesses to stop operating in 2013. It is the cause of 38.1 % of business’s narrow. One of the SMEs’ major financing sources for investment is bank loans (41.9%) and more than 50% SMEs have interest rates higher than they can afford. Only about 20 % of businesses were able to access loans in spite of their small production scale and lack of financial transparency.1% SMEs does not apply for bank loan because of inadequate collateral, high interest rate, complexities in application process, etc Paradoxically, the banking system is falling into a "capital inventory".
Concern of banks, in lending process is the risk of bad debt especially in the period in which the bad debt reaches an alarming rate in the whole of banking system. So the difficulties those enterprises face when borrowing form bank are what. There is a 1 lot of researches try to find out the answer to that question. According to theory of asymmetric information between borrowers and banks, the factors determining access to credit of enterprises can be classified into three main groups: (i) a grouped factor representing for Owner’s characteristics (Biggs et al ,2001), (Gartner et al, 2011), (Nguyen & Luu,2013), comprises education, ethnicity.
(ii) a grouped factor representing for Firm’s characteristics (Biggs et al ,2001), (Bebczuk, 2004),(Gartner et al, 2011), (Vo et al, 2011), (Said et al ,2013), (Le,2013) consists of firm age, firm size , type of firm, asset, liabilities… (iii) a grouped factor representing for Relationship between banks and borrowers (Biggs et al ,2001), (Bebczuk, 2004), Vo et al, 2011)includes previously borrowed, overdue debt. However, the previous studies were heterogeneous definitions of the variables. For example, revenue (Gartner et al, 2011) and number of employee (Vo et al, 2011), (Said et al, 2013) were used as representing firm size. Therefore, the impact of factors on credit access is different between studies.
According to above problems, this paper aims to indicate Determinants of access to formal credit by small and medium enterprises (SME) in Vietnam. Based on the data set of 1427 enterprise from “Characteristics of the Vietnamese business environment: evidence from a SME survey in 2009”, the research has applied probit model to identify determinants of access to formal credit by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.Research objectives General research objective is to examine determinants of access to formal credit by SMEs in Vietnam. Specific objectives are: a. To investigate factors that effect of probabilities of access to formal credit by SMEs in Vietnam.
To recommend policy implications in order to improve SMEs’s access to formal credit 2 1.Research questions The research’s main question is what are relationship between determinants and probability of access to formal credit? 1.Organization of the study The rest of the paper is organized into four chapters. Chapter 2 presents Literature review of SMEs, theoretical review, and empirical studies which were carried out inside and outside of Vietnam. Chapter 3 describes SMEs credit market in Vietnam, data, research methodology and analytical framework. Chapter 4 analyses the empirical results, identifies determinants of SMEs access and gives some quantitative analysis of those factors.
Chapter 5 concludes, suggests some practical policy implications; limitation and direction for further studies are also discussed in this chapter. 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is to review the theoretical and empirical literature 2.1 SME definition The term "SME" has a wide range of definitions. Most of organizations and countries determine small businesses based on the number of employees, revenue and assets. While World Bank defines SMEs as the companies have not more than 300 employees, $15 million in annual revenue, and $15 million in assets.
European Union defines SMEs as those enterprises with between 10 and 250 employees, and more than 10 million euro turnover or annual balance sheet total. American, meanwhile, described SMEs is a maximum of 100 employees and less than $3 million revenue. Egypt defines small businesses as firms have more than 5 and less than 50 employees. In periods 2001-2009, based on Government Decree 90/2001 ND- CP, SMEs in Vietnam was identified as follows: The business establishments are independent.
The registered capital is no more than 10 billion VND. The average annual number of permanent employees is no more than 300. Today, according to the Decree 56/2009/ND-CP, SMEs is differently categorized based on the total capital (must equal the total assets in balance sheet of enterprises) and The average yearly number of workers. The SME in three major sectors were divided into small and medium enterprises Table 2.