The Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) posted over 7.72 trillion VND (336.2 million USD) in pre-tax profit in the first half of 2018, up 52.7 percent year on year.

 

The figure represents 55.2 percent of the plan for 2018, Vietcombank General Director Pham Quang Dung said at a recent meeting to review the bank’s six-month performance.

 

He attributed the outcome to good capital mobilisation, credit growth and quality, and services, which have helped boost profit and rates of return.

 

In particular, the net interest margin was at 2.76 percent while the returns on assets and equity respectively reached 1.24 percent and 22.71 percent, higher than the averages in the market and strongly rising from last year.

 

Meanwhile, Vietcombank shares continued to have the biggest market capitalisation in the banking sector.

 

In 2018, the bank aims to raise total asset value by 14 percent, mobilised capital by 15 percent, and credit by 15 percent, while keeping bad debt at under 1.5 percent. It looks to gain pre-tax profit of 13 trillion VND (566.15 million USD), up 14.6 percent from 2017.

 

Recently, Vietcombank has become the first bank in Vietnam to meet the SWIFT Global Payments Innovation Initiative (GPI) standards, which make the bank ready to provide comprehensive solutions to satisfy clients’ demand in payment and money transfer.-VNA