The Determinants of Distribution of Credit: Evidence from Vietnam

Purpose: The issue of access to credit for private enterprises has been given an increased amount of attention given their crucial role in fueling economic growth. Vietnamese small and medium-sized businesses, however, face many obstacles in accessing financing for profitable investment opportunities, with up to 70% unable to access or obtain bank loans. This paper aims to address the factors affecting the credit accessibility of Vietnamese enterprises, and provide further insights of this issue under the new context of Basel II. Research design, data and methodology: We adopt a pooled sections approach to construct a sample of 155 firm observations before and after the implementation of Basel II accord in Vietnam and employing binary logistic regression and interaction terms for data analysis. Results: We find that firm characteristics (export participation, female ownership) and proxies for bank-borrower relationship (deposit, overdraft facility) have significant and positive effects on firm’s access to credit. Notably, the sign of interaction coefficient shows that the implementation of Basel II tends to benefit small-sized firms in terms of credit accessibility. Conclusions: The finding further emphasizes the important role of relationship lending in Vietnam’s credit market, which is even more critical for small firms when Basel II is universally applied as the new banking standards in the coming years.