A Vietcombank employee wearing a mask during a transaction with a customer. —VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Credit institutions reported that customers’ demand for banking products and services was at a low level in the third quarter compared to the previous one. In particular, the demand for personal deposits declined sharply.

This is the result of a business trend survey conducted by the Statistics and Forecasting Department under the State Bank of Việt Nam (SBV).

Credit institutions expect the demand to recover in the fourth quarter of this year if the pandemic situation is well controlled.

In a general assessment for the whole year, credit institutions have narrowed their expectations for growth in the demand for banking services, in which the demand for loans is expected to continue to increase higher than the demand for deposits and payments.

Meanwhile, recent data by the General Statistics Office showed that capital mobilisation of credit institutions only increased by 4.28 per cent as of September 20, lower than the same period last year (7.48 per cent).

And before that, data from SBV showed that deposits of personal and business customers at credit institutions increased by 3.59 per cent in the first seven months of this year, much lower than the same period in previous years.

At the same time, deposit growth is slower than credit growth. The General Statistics Office reported that credit growth reached 7.17 per cent by the end of last month, positively supporting economic growth in the first nine months of the year.

Credit institutions expected that capital mobilisation of the whole system would recover, increasing by 4.6 per cent on average in the fourth quarter of this year and by 10.4 per cent for the whole year.

However, this expectation has decreased compared to an expectation of 11.9 per cent in the previous survey period.

It is forecast that capital mobilisation of the whole credit institution system will grow by 12.6 per cent next year.

Although deposit growth is very low, experts believed that the liquidity of the banking system would still be very abundant under the support of the State Bank.

However, the sharp decrease in the demand for personal deposits also raises concerns.

Nguyễn Quốc Hùng, general secretary of the Việt Nam Bankers Association, said that the amount of personal deposits to credit institutions has dropped since the beginning of the year, therefore, the ability to mobilise capital also tended to decrease.

This led to the risk of difficulties in resources to support businesses after the pandemic, leading to possible liquidity pressure in the future, he added. — VNS