Besides the loan to the Long Thành airport project, Vietcombank is also looking to lend to many other key projects in oil and gas and electricity, seaport and industrial infrastructure. — Photo cafef.vn

HÀ NỘI — Lending to large infrastructure projects of major companies will become a major credit growth driver for banks in 2024, as larger institutions have so far this year stepped up the lending, with credit grants worth tens of trillions of Vietnamese đồng, analysts forecast.

Vietcombank, VietinBank and BIDV this month signed a credit contracts worth US$1.8 billion with Vietnam Airports Corporation (ACV) to fund the ACV’s Long Thành International Airport construction project. This is the largest medium and long term credit grant in foreign currency to customers in the Vietnamese banking industry to date.

In addition, this is also the first project to be completely arranged with medium and long term US dollar loans from Vietnamese commercial banks, with more competitive conditions than that of international financial institutions.

Analysts from the DSC Securities Company expects credit growth of Vietcombank, which is the capital source for the ACV's project, to be better from the second quarter this year, after the bank starts disbursement to key infrastructure projects such as the airport.

In the Q2 2024 banking industry report, analysts from Vietcombank Securities Company (VCBS) said banks such as LPBank, Techcombank, HDBank and MSB, which have had a high lending proportion in the real estate and construction sectors, recorded a higher credit growth than the entire banking industry.

Specifically, outstanding loans to large corporate customers have been the main credit growth driver of MSB in the first quarter of this year, with a rising rate of 13.9 per cent compared to the end of last year, while outstanding loans to individual customers decreased by 7.4 per cent.

HDBank also reported a 9.4 per cent growth in credit to corporate customers, while credit to individual customers only reached 2 per cent and credit to the construction industry posted an increase of 24.3 per cent.

In the context of slow recovery of retail loans, analysts from Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI) believe HDBank will continue to disburse funds to construction enterprises due to their large capital needs.

At the Vietcombank 2024 annual general meeting of shareholders (AGM), the bank’s leaders said in the context of low retail credit growth, Vietcombank will focus on large corporate customers in national and key economic projects.

In addition to the loan to Long Thành, Vietcombank is also looking to lend to many other key projects in oil and gas, electricity, seaports and industrial infrastructure.

Vietcombank believes that the bank’s credit growth this year can reach the target of 12 per cent and control the bad debt ratio below 1.5 per cent, Vietcombank’s General Director Nguyễn Thanh Tùng said.

At VietinBank's AGM, a member of the bank’s board of directors Trần Văn Tần said the electricity industry has large capital needs, of which wind power is the most promising.

According to estimates by FiinRatings, Việt Nam needs nearly $600 billion by 2040, or at least $25-30 billion annually, to invest in infrastructure over the next ten years.

While commercial banks play an important role as the main source of funding, the allocation of loan capital to the infrastructure sector is still relatively modest, usually ranging from 5 per cent to 7 per cent of each bank's outstanding loans. — VNS