Many banks have planned to set up more branches and transaction offices in the early days of the new year to seize new business opportunities.

After getting approval from the central bank in the second week of the New Year, HDBank said it would open five branches in the northern and central provinces of Hung Yen, Thai Binh, Thai Nguyen, Vinh Phuc and Dak Nong.

The bank will also establish another 39 transaction offices in 26 cities and provinces this year, raising its network to 282 branches and transaction offices nationwide.

In the early days of 2018, MBBank has also been licensed to establish an additional five branches and 12 transaction offices, bringing its network to 96 branches and 188 transaction offices throughout the country.

Many other banks such as SCB, Bac A Bank and Ban Viet have also decided to enlarge their network of branches and transaction offices right at the beginning of the year.

Experts said that banks want to enlarge their network as the banking sector is forecast to see a prosperous year in 2018.

According to a State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) survey released recently, business performance of commercial banks is forecast to continue its upward trend this year after making significant improvements last year.

According to the survey, many banks expect better results in Q1 2018, compared with Q4 2017. They also hope their business performance this entire year would further improve against last year.

Pre-tax profits of many banks are predicted to rise in 2018, 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, according to the survey.

Many banks have so far also reportedly gained a high profit last year, helped by strong credit growth and initial gains in the settlement of bad debts.

A recent report from the National Financial Supervisory Committee (NFSC) also estimated that 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.

Truong Van Phuoc, NFSC’s acting chairman, said this was thanks to the handling of bad debts, hastened by the National Assembly’s Resolution 42/2014. Some VND70 trillion (US$3.08 billion) worth of non-performing loans were handled in 2017, up 40 per cent against 2016. — VNS