Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh stressed the necessity for Vietcombank to maintain its leadership and innovation within Viet Nam's banking sector in order to help ensure macro-economic stability, control inflation, and advance socio-economic progress, in a statement made on Thursday.

PM Chinh's remarks were delivered during the 60th anniversary celebration of the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) in Ha Noi, where the bank was also honoured with the 'Labour Hero' title.

Over the past six decades, Vietcombank has achieved significant accomplishments across various sectors. The bank has been consistently recognised as "The best bank in Viet Nam" by prestigious global publications and institutions such as The Banker, Financial Times, and EuroMoney. In 2022, Standard & Poor's raised Vietcombank's credit rating from BB- to BB.

In 2022, Vietcombank's total assets reached VND1.8 quadrillion, ranking in the top three of the country’s banking system. The bank is currently the largest listed enterprise in Viet Nam, leading in terms of profit scale and contribution to the State budget.

Vietcombank is ranked among the 100 listed banks with the largest market capitalisation in the world (US$18.5 billion) and is the only Vietnamese bank with a commercial presence in all three world financial centres including Hong Kong, the US and Singapore.

Vietcombank has a vision to 2030 to become the No. 1 banking and financial group in Viet Nam, one of the 200 largest banking and financial groups in the world, and one of the 1,000 largest listed companies in the world.

The bank has consecutively hit record high profitability and is close to its target of $2 billion by 2025.

PM Chinh said: “Vietcombank must continually pioneer to effectively implement guidelines and policies of the Party and State to both perform well its banking functions and support people and firms in promoting production and business to contribute to maintaining macro-economic stability, controlling inflation and promoting socio-economic development.”

Vietcombank should continue to further renew governance and apply modern technologies to reduce costs to pave the way for lending interest rate cuts to support people and firms in accessing loans, he noted.

At the same time, the PM said, Vietcombank must closely coordinate and support other credit institutions to help the system of Vietnamese credit institutions achieve targets of reaching the development level of the group of four leading countries in the ASEAN region by 2025.

“The development strategy of Viet Nam's banking industry to 2025 with a vision to 2030 targets to have at least 2-3 commercial banks in the top 100 largest banks by the end of 2025 in Asia and 3-5 banks to be listed on foreign stock exchanges. Vietcombank needs to be the pioneer to take on this task. It is a worthy choice and I believe that Vietcombank will be able to do it to meet the expectations of people and businesses across the country," the PM said.

In order to develop on a par with other banks in the Asian region, the PM noted Vietcombank needed to further improve the quality and efficiency of operations, drastically transform business activities and governance to meet international best standards, and increase capital to improve financial strength and narrow the gap in size with international financial groups. — VNS