Green credit for agriculture and rural areas has many opportunities to break through

The addition of organic agriculture and circular agriculture models to the subjects of credit interest rate support under Decree 55/2015, which has been amended and supplemented by Decree 116/2018, as well as the issuance of a new Decree on the pilot mechanism for developing a circular economy, will help the green credit sector in the agricultural sector have many growth opportunities.

In 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development aims for GDP growth of the entire sector to reach 3.4 - 3.5%; agricultural, forestry and fishery export turnover of about 64 - 65 billion USD. In particular, it emphasizes plans to restructure the agricultural economy towards effective, sustainable, transparent, responsible and multi-value integrated development; at the same time, it encourages the development of large-scale agriculture in the direction of organic and circular.

One of the key tasks set by the Ministry this year is to reorganize production according to specialized areas, associated with geographical indications, traceability and the development of codes for growing and farming areas. In addition, it is necessary to strongly develop cooperative economy, support linkages along the value chain and replicate effective models in the Project to Develop One Million Hectares of High-Quality Rice Associated with Green Growth in the Mekong Delta.

The above orientations of the agricultural sector show that the trend of “greening” the agricultural economy is the dominant trend and is encouraged and prioritized for development nationwide. This also suggests that in 2025 and the following years, the “green agriculture” sector will be the “drop point” of preferential support policies in terms of both investment law and finance and credit. In particular, support policies, preferential interest rates, and conditions for accessing commercial bank loans will be more open.

Observing from reality until the end of 2024, it can be seen that agriculture and rural areas are still the sectors that the banking system has given the most priority and preferential programs compared to other sectors of the economy. Only counting lending activities for rice production and trading in the Mekong Delta, by the end of 2024, credit institutions had lent about 124,000 billion VND.

For the Project on Developing One Million Hectares of High-Quality Rice, dozens of large models have now accessed preferential loans and commercial banks have committed to unlimited credit limits. Meanwhile, for the preferential interest rate loan package for the forestry and fishery sector, from the initial limit of VND15,000 billion, it has now been increased to VND60,000 billion with the participation of dozens of commercial banks. Outstanding loans in many localities for this sector have reached VND4,000 - 5,000 billion, supporting 1-2% interest rates for thousands of businesses.

Dozens of models under the 1 million hectare low-emission high-quality rice project in the Mekong Delta have accessed preferential interest rate credit capital.

Entering 2025, the keywords “green economy”, “green agriculture”, “circular economy”… are once again emphasized by the banking sector in many localities as targets for credit growth. For example, in Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai, in the 2025 plan, the banking sector in these localities all set the goal of increasing the development of “green credit”, following the direction of the Government and the State Bank of Vietnam to contribute to the transformation of the economy towards green growth and low carbon emissions.

At the Government level, the Ministry of Planning and Investment is currently drafting a Decree on a pilot mechanism for developing a circular economy. It proposes that projects in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries; industry; renewable energy and construction materials will be given priority for preferential green loans at credit institutions, investment funds and in cooperation with units with the function of issuing green bonds.

Meanwhile, on the banking side, the SBV leader said that the unit is currently reviewing the preferential policies in Decree 55/2015/ND-CP and Decree 116/2018/ND-CP (on credit policies for agricultural and rural development). It is very likely that areas such as organic agriculture and circular economy will be supplemented and legalized in the revised decree in the near future. This will create conditions for cooperatives and farming households to access loans more easily and borrow capital with higher limits without having to increase collateral.

In terms of implementation, it is observed that currently dozens of commercial banks, such as VietinBank, Agribank, TPBank, MB, etc., have developed sets of social and environmental standards for projects, lending partners, and customers. Banks have also been quite proactive in designing specific products for customers in the agricultural sector to create a flexible mechanism for funding and expanding access to green financial services.

From the above developments, it can be concluded that in 2025, with the target of 16% credit growth for the entire system, it is likely that from the first months of the year, a series of banks will "strongly launch" products and services related to the green banking and green economy sectors. In particular, for the agricultural and rural areas, the competition of the commercial banking system in financing green agricultural projects, organic agriculture, agricultural value chains, etc. will be quite exciting, because up to now, in addition to Agribank, a series of other banks such as HDBank, LPBank, KienlongBank, NamABank, BacABank, NCB, etc. are all directing credit flows to key agricultural areas.

Source: https://thoibaonganhang.vn/tin-dung-xanh-cho-tam-nong-nhieu-co-hoi-but-pha-159838.html