Vietnam’s listed banks see credit grow 11% in Jan-Sep

The Hanoitimes – It is expected that around VND391 trillion (US$16.76 billion) of credit could flow into the economy in the last quarter of 2018, which will be enough to meet the entire demand of the economy in the remaining months. By the end of September, credit growth of the 14 listed banks was 11% year-to-date, implying that total credit growth of those banks in the third quarter was approximately two percentage points, according to Vietnam Dragon Securities Company (VDSC).  The growth, however, varied quite a bit between banks. Particularly, the credit growth of small banks like Vietnam Export Import Commercial Bank (EIB), Kien Long Bank (KLB) or Saigon Hanoi Commercial Bank (SHB) was almost unchanged compared to the end of June.  Meanwhile, state-owned commercial banks still had positive credit growth compared to the average of listed banks, with Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (VietinBank) and Vietnam Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietcombank) gaining 4.9, 2.6, and 3.5 percentage points in the July-September quarter, respectively. Besides their role as commercial banks, state-owned banks also have duties supporting the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) in stabilizing the monetary market. Therefore, it is possible that a large amount from these banks was lent to important sectors at low interest rates. To compensate, somehow, the amount of deposits from the State Treasury in these three banks also increased sharply, more than 16% compared to the end of June 2018.  Profit-before-tax (PBT) of these… [Read full story]