Vietnam State Bank activities increased significantly last year

Vietnam central bank open market transactions jumped 21 percent to $7.7 billion in 2006, data showed on Thursday.

The central bank sold 87.4 trillion dong ($5.4 billion) worth of debt, representing 70.4 percent of total transactions, which was a significant rise from 950 billion dong in 2005 .
"The transactions have been an effective instrument of the central bank especially when there has been a huge surplus of dong in commercial banks since last year," a dealer with a foreign bank branch in Ho Chi Minh City said.

As of March, the central bank raised trading days for open market transactions to four weekly from three earlier, excluding Monday, an official with the market said.

Source: Reuters