After gaining positive business performance last year, many banks have planned to hold annual general meetings (AGMs) for 2018 soon.

Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB) announced on Thursday it would hold its AGM on March 29.

The deadline for shareholders to register for the meeting is February 22.

MB has also planned to elect one additional member to its Supervisory Board for the 2014-19 period at the meeting.

Vietnam Export and Import Commercial Bank will hold its AGM on April 27 at Sheraton Saigon Hotel. The bank will elect two additional members to its Board of Directors at the meeting.

Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank is expected to hold its AGM on March 29.

Sai GonThuongTin Commercial Joint Stock Bank will close its shareholders list to take part in its AGM on February 2 and is expected to hold the meeting on April 20. In 2018, the bank aims to speed up restructuring and become the top retail bank in Viet Nam and other neighbouring countries.

Lien Viet Post Commercial Joint Stock Bank plans to hold its shareholders’ meeting on March 28.

According to the leaders of many banks, the banking sector still faces challenges despite achieving positive results in 2017. They said they would carefully consider business targets before submitting them at the upcoming AGMs.

A report from the National Financial Supervisory Committee (NFSC) estimated that the pre-tax profits of the banking sector in 2017 rose by more than 40 per cent over the previous year, while after-tax profits surged by 44.5 per cent.

Business performance of commercial banks is forecast to continue its upward trend this year. According to a State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV)’s business sentiment survey released recently, which covered domestic and foreign commercial banks in Vietnam, 71.8 per cent of the respondents expected better results in Q1 2018 compared with Q4 2017 and 88.6 per cent hoped their business performance this entire year will further improve against last year, of which 29.2 per cent anticipated "significant improvement."

Up to 92.6 per cent of the correspondents forecast their pre-tax profit in 2018 would rise compared with last year, helping the average growth rate of the entire banking system reach 19.33 per cent, much higher than the 13.4 per cent forecast in a survey conducted at the same time last year.

A total of 78.1 per cent of the correspondents also expected customer demands for banking services, especially lending, this year will increase in comparision with last year. The rate for Q1 2018 alone is 59 per cent. — VNS