14/08/2019
After a period of strong loan book growth during 2013-2017, Vietnam has witnessed a slowdown - the national loan book grew by 14% in 2018 compared to 18% in 2017. Concerns about aggressive lending practices, and the possible risk in the real estate and non-production sectors have resulted in a tightening of regulations by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV). Additionally, the focus was on resolving the legacy bad debt with the resulting non-performing loans ratio (NPL) at only 1.89% by YE2018. Considering these events, the SBV also set a modest target of 14% YoY credit growth for 2019.