Central bank says bad debts well under control

By Nam Anh May 24, 2019 | 01:19 am PT

Vietnam has set a target for banks of less than 2 percent of interal NPL on their books in 2019. Photo by Shutterstock/thi

The banking sector managed to keep its internal bad debts ratio below 3 percent at the end of Q1, according to the central bank.

According to a report of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), results from this year’s annual general meeting season showed strong bad-debts control by the 17 listed banks.

While the majority reported internal non-performing loans (NPL) of 1-2 percent, some have even managed to keep it below 1 percent.

ACB reported the lowest NPL of 0.73 percent, followed by Vietcombank with 0.97 percent, MBBank with 1.33 percent, HDBank with 1.45 percent, and TPBank with 1.89 percent.

According to the report, since 2012, banks have recovered a total of VND907.3 trillion ($38.96 billion) worth of bad debts.

Last year alone they recovered VND163.14 trillion ($7 billion), bringing NPL still on their books down to 2.02 percent.

It has set a target for banks of less than 2 percent of interal NPL on their books in 2019.