HÀ NỘI — A majority of credit institutions in the country expects an upward trend in their business in the remaining months of the year, after making improvements in the first quarter.

This was revealed in a survey released on Wednesday by the State Bank of Việt Nam.

According to the business sentiment survey, which covered domestic and foreign commercial banks in the country, 75 per cent of the respondents expected better results in the second quarter, while 84 per cent hoped their business performance throughout 2018 to improve further compared to last year. Of this, 28 per cent anticipated “significant improvement”.

Eighty-four per cent of the respondents predicted their pre-tax profit in 2018 to rise compared to last year, helping the average growth rate of the entire banking system to reach 18.2 per cent, lower than the 19.3 per cent forecast in the previous survey conducted in the first quarter of this year.

The survey also showed that 64 per cent and 69 per cent of the respondents expected customer demands for banking services, especially lending, in the second quarter and the entire year, respectively, to increase compared to last year.

Banks expected the banking system’s credit growth to reach 4.85 per cent in the second quarter and 16.3 per cent in the entire year.

The respondents also anticipated capital mobilisation of the entire banking system this year to reach 16.65 per cent, of which the increase in second quarter was anticipated at 4.71 per cent.

Banks also said the liquidity of the banking system in both Vietnamese đồng and foreign currencies was currently “good” and that the positive status would continue for the rest of the year.

With optimism about growth prospects for 2018, banks also anticipated the industry’s labour market to see positive changes in the coming months.

Despite more recruitment in the first quarter, 23.2 per cent of the respondents said they were still short of employees and planned to recruit more in the second quarter of this year.

Another 61 per cent of the respondents said they will also increase their recruitment in the second quarter. — VNS