HCM City loans grow by 5.4 per cent during H1. — Photo vnexpress.net

HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — The outstanding loans of HCM City's credit institutions totalled some VND1,125 trillion (US$53.57 billion) in the first half of 2015, up 5.4 per cent over the end of last year.

The State Bank of Viet Nam's (SBV's) local branch reported that medium to long-term loans accounted for nearly 55 per cent of the total figure.

Deposits at the city's credit institutions grew some 3 per cent during the first half of the year, with people's savings increasing 7.69 per cent.

The SBV branch said the total committed capital in the city's programme to connect banks and businesses had reached VND65 trillion ($3.10 billion) this year, or VND5 trillion ($238.10 million) higher than the annual target.

The municipal People's Committee assigned the local banking sector to implement the scheme to help enterprises maintain production and business activities while demand in the economy remained low.

The city planned to hold a conference to link banks and companies investing in industrial and export processing zones in July. Foreign-invested firms in these zones have mainly been borrowing money from foreign banks, which reportedly claimed lower loan costs than domestic lenders.

Meanwhile, the Ha Noi statistics department reported that credit institutions in the capital lent a combined total of some VND1,100 trillion ($52.38 billion) in the first half, up 9 per cent over the end of last year.

The deposits they secured in the first half reached nearly VND1,290 trillion ($61.43 billion), an increase of 1 per cent over end-2014. — VNS