According to the data from the State Bank of Vietnam, the total bad debt ratio of the whole system by March this year was at 2.18 per cent.
Yet so far, only few banks have been able to reduce their bad debt ratios such as BIDV, KienlongBank, VIB, Sacombank and Eximbank, bad debts of other banks are still increasing especially after a strong credit growth in the first half of this year.
Since the end of last year, bad debt at VPBank has increased significantly from around $267.3 million to $349 million.
Most notably, non-performing loan (NPL), a loan on which the borrower is not making interest payments or repaying any principal, increased sharply from around $46 million to $69 million, up 50 per cent in the first half of 2018. By the end of June this year, VPBank’s bad debt reached approximately 4.07 per cent.
“The high bad debt ratio of the bank is the result of the merge between VPBank with its subsidiary, FE credit, whose bad debt ratio is always around 5 per cent. VPBank alone was safe at bad debt level of (under three per cent) 2.33 per cent at the end of 2017 and 2.71 per cent by the middle of this year,” said a representative from VPBank.
Ranking second is Sacombank with a bad debt ratio of 3.74 per cent at the end of June this year. This figure is fairly low compared to the ratio of 4.67 per cent at the end of 2017.
According to Sacombank, the bank has recovered over $155 million of bad debt and outstanding assets in the first half of this year and is expected to reduce their bad debt ratio to under three per cent by the end of this year.
Besides these two banks, there are roundly 18 others reporting to have bad debt ratio at above three per cent over the first six months of 2018. Other banks with bad debt ratio from two per cent to three per cent are Eximbank, VIB, SHB or banks with pretty low bad debt ratio of below two per cent are Vietcombank, TPBank, BIDV, MB, etc.
The bad debt scenario of banks over the last six months had a lot of disturbance. In particular, bad debt ratio of banks fluctuated from 0.73 per cent to 4.07 per cent. Bac A Bank, ACB and KienlongBank remain to be banks with lowest bad debt ratio. With the reduction of bad debt ratio from 1.07 per cent at the end of the first quarter this year to 0.98 per cent, LienVietPostBank also recently joined the list of banks with low bad debt ratio.
