UPDATE 1-Vietnam dong slides in forwards market

(Adds comments and updates dong rates)

By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI, June 3 (Reuters) - Offshore forwards markets on Tuesday are pricing in nearly a 30 percent fall in the Vietnamese dong in a year but the risk of a sharp official devaluation in the currency remains small, Goldman Sachs said in a report.

Vietnam's developing economy and the dong are under pressure from inflation running at more than 25 percent and rising imports, but "the probability of a balance of payments crisis is not large enough to make it our baseline scenario yet", the U.S. investment bank said in its report on Tuesday.

The State Bank of Vietnam, the central bank, set the dong's official exchange rate at 16,099 per dollar on Tuesday, the lowest level since Jan. 28.

Banks are allowed to trade the currencies within the +/- 1 percent band of the official rate, even though they have urged the central bank to double the daily band to +/- 2 percent.

The official rate "can be pushed up to regain competitiveness or another way is to widen the band," Martin Rama, acting country director for the World Bank in Vietnam, told a news conference.

A World Bank report said a lower dong value would make Vietnam's exports cheaper and thus help restore the country's trade balance, after January-May's trade deficit more than trebled to $14.4 billion, above the gap for the whole of 2007.

The central bank said on Monday it would adjust the trading band "at an appropriate moment".