Vietcombank’s pre-tax profit hit a record high of $476.39 million

Among thegroup of large-sized banks, Vietcombank’s pre-tax profit hit a record high ofmore than 11.1 trillion VND (476.39 million USD) in the first half of 2019,meeting 54 percent of the bank’s annual plan. The value was nearly equal to thebank’s profit gained in the whole of 2017.

Vietcombank’sprofit was also expected to be the highest in the entire banking system in thefirst six months of this year.

Vietcombank’simpressive results were attributed to the bank’s success in pursuing strategiesto strongly shift from wholesale to the retail banking segment, boost capitalfor investment activities and increase the proportion and revenue from servicesover the past three years.

Notably,the high profit was gained after Vietcombank spent some 3.3 trillion VND (141.6million USD) for provisions of risky loans in the first half of this year. Thebank’s non-performing loan ratio was low at only 1 percent of total outstandingloans by the end of June.

Vietcombankthis year plans to gain profit of 20 trillion VND (858.14 million USD) and thebank’s chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh said that the target was feasible and itmight even reach a higher value of up to 1 billion USD.

As forthe group of medium-sized banks, TPBank also posted a record high in profitwith 1.62 trillion VND in the first half of 2019. The value was 1.5 timeshigher compared to the same period last year and met 50.6 percent of the bank’sannual plan.

In thegroup of small banks, Nam A Bank was the first bank to announce the first half’sbusiness performance results with a profit of 440 billion VND, equal to 55 percentof bank’s yearly plan. The value inched up compared with a profit of 426billion VND that the bank released by the end of May.

Accordingto Nam A Bank’s general director Tran Ngoc Tam, the profit in June was lowerthan monthly profit in the previous five months because the bank boostedspending on information technology investment and opened more branches in June.

Earlier,experts were concerned that Vietnam’s banking sector earnings growth wouldlikely moderate this year following a sterling year in 2018 due to the centralbank’s policies to tighten loan growth. Banks were also expected to tightenlending towards riskier ventures in anticipation of the Basel II standards andthis would weigh on loan growth.

Inaddition, they forecast Vietnam's economic growth was unlikely to bespared from the global economic slowdown and the slowing economic activity amida dimmer growth outlook would thus weigh on credit demand.-VNS/VNA