An empirical analysis on the parallel foreign exchange market: The case of Vietnam

Vietnam is a developing country with a fixed exchange rate regime and the use of foreign currency is under control of the monetary authorities. Hence, like other developing countries, Vietnam also has the parallel exchange market that exists together with the official exchange market though, it is illegal. The existence of the parallel exchange market creates several complications to the State Bank of Vietnam in their attempts to manage the foreign exchange market and the exchange rate. Fluctuations in the parallel market rates affect both the level of international reserves, the position of the economy and portfolio decisions of the public. Therefore, a strong understanding of the parallel foreign exchange market will help the State bank of Vietnam have sound policies in the foreign exchange market. The monetary approach to the parallel foreign exchange market initially developed by Blejer (1978) and then further developed by Agénor (1991) is used. This approach focuses on the disequilibrium in the money market in explaining movements in output, price, the parallel market exchange rate, and change in net foreign assets An increase of money supply by 1% causes the exchange rate in the parallel market depreciated by 0.015%. A 1 per cent devaluation of the official exchange rate would bring about 1.33 per cent devaluation of the parallel market rate. These results bespeak the State Bank of Vietnam’s efforts to reduce the market premium seem to be not success and stimulating economic growth by money supply would lead to deprecation in both markets