Vietnam battling bad-debt woes

HANOI: With a shabby facade, bars on its windows and flanked by a hair salon and a knock-off clothing store, the Vietnam Asset Management Co (VAMC) looks more like a backstreet pawnshop than a much-heralded bad-debt bank.

This no-frills office with PVC sofas, chintzy 1980s decor and no elevator houses what’s been the central bank’s shoestring saviour for wayward banks and risky borrowers who ran up US$20bil in bad debt in 2012 and almost brought a promising economy to its knees.