Bank to sustain 10% credit growth
Farmers in the northern mountainous Ha Giang Province’s Bac Quang District build a biogas system. Clean energy is one of the areas that the Viet Nam Development Bank will focus its credits. — VNA/VNS Photo Dinh Hue
HA NOI (VNS)— The Viet Nam Development Bank (VDB) will reach an average credit growth rate of about 10 per cent per year between now and 2020, according to the bank’s medium-term strategies approved late last week by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Such a growth rate will ensure financial safety and consolidate the sustainability and efficiency of a bank which does not target profits to implement Government policy lending.
Any profit will be used to guarantee the bank’s capacity to carry out investment and export lending policies and other tasks assigned by the Government to help fulfill the nation’s socio-economic development strategies and plans in different periods.
According to the approved plans, the VDB will build a roadmap to increase its charter capital to VND20 trillion (US$952.38 million) in 2015 and VND30 trillion ($1.43 billion) in 2020, which is the equivalent to 10 per cent of the total State lending for investments and exports.
It will concentrate credits into areas including socio-economic infrastructure, support industries, agriculture and rural areas, education, healthcare, environment protection, green technology and clean and recyclable energy.
The plans will also put a focus onto lending into industries which generate high export values and sectors in need of Government support to ensure international commitments.
The bank will complete credit guarantee services for small and medium-sized enterprises to help them gain capital for production and business activities, while enhancing its financial capacity and fortifying risk management.
Dung urged the VDB to review its lending portfolios, borrowers and their projects so that it can restructure capital sources and assure “reasonable” credit growth, improve credit quality in customer assessing, capital disbursing and debt recovering phases, and seek effective measures to deal with bad debts.
He noted that the bank needed to reduce its bad debt ratio to 7 per cent by 2015, 4-5 per cent by 2020 and below 3 per cent by 2030.
He tasked the VDB with exploring the possibility of building a separate law to apply for policy banks, which are currently allowed to operate in accordance to the Law on State Budget and the Law on Credit Institutions.
The bank was also asked to reach a capital safety ratio of 10 per cent and a total asset value of about VND500 trillion ($23.8 billion) by 2020. — VNS