After the first six months of 2010, An Binh Joint stock Bank (ABBank)
earned 354 billion dong of pre tax profit, reaching 64 percent of its
yearly plan, in which its profits from credit operations accounted for
about 39 percent. In late June, outstanding loans of this bank were
estimated at 15.219 trillion dong, up 77 percent over the same period in
2009.
Pham Quoc Thanh, deputy general director of ABBank said that if the
financial market performs well in the remaining six months of this year,
the profitability of his bank in the third quarter of 2010 will grow
and stabilise and the bank would be able to complete its yearly business
plan earlier.
Also, in the first 6 months of this year, Vietnam Eximbank earned over
930 billion dong of pre-tax profit compared with 2.2 trillion dong set
for the whole year plan.
Overall, the business profits the banks have achieved in the first half
were considered quite positive, but not yet to reach their expectations
and plans they made in earlier this year.
Although Vietnam's GDP growth rate reached 6.16 percent in the first
half, outstanding loans of the banking sector actually increased by only
10.52 percent, while the growth of outstanding loans set for this year
was 25 percent.
According to bankers, in remaining six months of this year, the banking
sector expects to gain high pre-tax profit mostly from lending
activities.
However, according to analysts, in efforts to complete the credit growth
rate of 25 percent as planned from now until the end of the year, the
average credit growth per month must be nearly 2.5 percent. If
commercial banks want to boost credits, they will have to reduce lending
rates, to stimulate enterprises to increase borrowing loans.
In fact, in the last months of the year, the demand for loans by
individuals, and companies always increase, so the targeted credit
growth of banks in 2010 is totally attainable, said bankers.