Vietnamese banks expect profits to rise

A newly-released central bank survey on business trends among Vietnamese banks found 72.6 percent saying their business situation had improved from the second quarter, with 15.8 percent reporting significant improvement.

The survey, which was conducted in September, showed that over half, 56.8 percent, of the banks surveyed said that they have hired more staff in the third quarter, higher than the 46 percent in the second quarter.

But 26.6 percent of them said they still need more staff and 61.5 percent planned to hire more people in the last quarter.

The banks project lending to grow the most, followed by payments and deposits.

Over 88 percent expect profits before tax to grow 18.6 percent on average from last year, higher than last year’s expectations of 13.6 percent.

They expect capital mobilization on average will grow by 5.8 percent in the last quarter and 15.3 percent for the whole year, higher than last year’s 14.9 percent.

The banks also forecast their outstanding loans to grow by 4.5 percent in the last quarter this year and by 15.2 percent for the whole year thanks to a stable mobilization interest rate.

Vietnam has nine wholly-owned foreign banks, four state-owned banks and 31 joint-stock banks.

The country’s credit growth in the first nine months of this year was 9.52 percent, lower than the 11.02 percent of the same period last year.