In the NFSC's report on the Vietnam's financial market in 2017 released on December 26, Nguyen Van Thuy, deputy head of the NFSC's General Supervision Department said that the non-performing loans ratio in 2017 was estimated to stand at 9.5% of the total outstanding loans which fell sharply from 11.5% in early 2017.
Thuy said that the decrease of the ratio was mainly due to the improvements to asset quality of credit institution and the reduction of potential non-performing loans and corporate bonds.
Earlier, at the National Assembly's Q&A session in mid-November, Governor Le Minh Hung said that the non-performing ratio at the end of September 2017 was reported by the State Bank of Vietnam at 2.34%.
However, he noted that this was the non-performing ratio calculated in the balance sheet of banks, not including the non-performing loans sold to the Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC) and loans removed from the balance sheet.
Hung added that if all the elements are included in the calculation, the non-performing loans ratio by the end of September 2017 was at 8.61%.
However, according to the NFSC, the process of dealing with non-performing loans has been accelerated, especially in the remaining months of this year. The banking sector has settled VND70 trillion (US$3.08 billion) worth of non-performing loans in 2017.
The NFSC also forecast that Vietnam's economic growth rate will reach 6.5-6.8% in 2018 while the inflation rate will be curbed at less than 4% in 2018.
