Development Strategy of Vietnam Banking Sector to 2025 with Orientations to 2030

The Strategy highlights the views of the Government regarding the monetary and banking system, as well as the operations of the credit institutions (CIs) as the lifeblood of the economy, continuing to play a critical role in the overall financial system of Vietnam.

Stabilizing the operations of the CI system plays a key part in the monetary and financial stability. It is a prerequisite for the macroeconomic stability, sustainable growth and must be ensured by the synchronous and effective coordination between the monetary policy and the fiscal policy, and other macro policies; with the harmonious development, the balance between the banking sector with the securities and insurance sector. The institutional improvements in the monetary and banking sector plays an important role in contributing to the improvements of the socialist-oriented market economy. The State, through the role of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), creates a stable and secure monetary and banking business environment, encourages healthy competition, ensures disciplines, the rules of law, and respects the market rules. The State intervenes mainly with market instruments, or through state financial resources. The CIs within the system from all economic sectors are treated equally and can compete under the law, can have autonomy in their operations and take accountability for their actions.

For the SBV: The Strategy aims to modernize the SBV towards: Having a rational organization model and synchronous, effective and efficient operation mechanism, in line with the socialist-oriented market mechanism, with full legal standing and accountability; The priority objective is to control inflation, contribute to the macroeconomic stability, promote sustainable growth; Ensuring the safety and soundness of the CIs network, playing a key role in ensuring the financial stability; Implementing a supervisory role for the payment system, becoming a payment and settlement center for the payment systems and the financial - monetary transactions in the economy.

The Strategy also aims to gradually increase the independence, the autonomy and accountability of the SBV for the purpose of managing the monetary policy, controlling inflation at an appropriate level along with the socio-economic development orientations in each period, to support the macroeconomic stability and promote the objective of sustainable economic growth; Strengthening the institutional capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of the banking inspection and supervision by the SBV; Expending the scope of inspection and supervision to financial corporations in the form of the parent - subsidiary companies, in which the parent company is a CI; By the end of 2025, the banking supervision and supervision will adhere most of Basel's principles of effective banking supervision.

Promoting the development of non-cash payments in Vietnam, with the optimization of the ATM and POS networks. By the end of 2020, the ratio of cash to total liquidity will be not higher than 10%; By the end of 2025, this figure would be reduced to 8%. Increasing the number of enterprises and people having access to financial and banking services provided by the CIs. Focusing on developing appropriate types of services for the population groups with little or no access to traditional banking services in the rural, remote areas, or areas with difficult socio-economic conditions.

For the CIs: The Strategy sets out the objectives of developing the CIs network to operate transparently, competitively, safely and efficiently; diversifying the structures of ownerships, sizes and types of CIs; based on advanced technology and advanced banking management, in line with the international practices and standards, the CIs network will move towards the development of the top four ASEAN countries by 2025; Adapting to the process of liberalization and globalization; Meeting the increasing demands for financial and banking services of the economy, towards financial inclusion in 2030, ensuring that people and businesses have the opportunity to access fully and conveniently to quality banking and financial services, actively contributing to the sustainable development.

Specifically, developing the CIs network in line with socio-economic conditions and the actual state of the system in each period.

In the 2018-2020 period, the CIs network will continue to be restructured with a focus on basic and thorough handling with non-performing loans (bad debts) and poor-performing CIs using appropriate forms in accordance with the market mechanism on the principle of prudence, ensuring the interests of the depositors and maintaining the stability and safety of the system; Continuing to improve the financial status and improve the management capacity of the CIs in accordance with the law and the international practices.

By 2020: Striving for the targets that by 2020, the commercial banks will have their equity capital in line with Basel II standards; at least 1-2 commercial banks are among the 100 largest banks (by total assets) in Asia. Incorporation of bad debt ratio in the CIs, bad debts sold to Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC) and debts which have gone through debt classification measures to be less than 3% (excluding poor-performing commercial banks approved by the Government to be restructured).

Period 2021 - 2025: To further enhance the competitiveness, increase the transparency and adhere to good international standards and practices in the management and operations of CIs. By the end of 2025, at least 2-3 commercial banks will be among the top 100 largest banks (by total assets) in Asia.

All commercial banks apply Basel II according to the standard approach, and implementing on a pilot scale Basel II under the advanced approaches.

Increasing the efficiency of allocating credit capital to meet the requirements of the socio-economic development; Accelerating the development of "green credit", "green bank" to help transform the economy into green growth; Increasing the proportion of the banks’ credit investments in renewable energy, clean energy; Integrating the contents of sustainable development, climate change and green growth into the credit programs and projects.

Step by step raising Vietnam's position in the international banking fora and organizations, in service of the banking development, in line with the requirements of the international integration.

Implementation

The Strategy outlines a range of key tasks and solutions, such as: Improving the legal framework in the monetary and banking areas on the basis of fully observing the rules of the market economy in line with the international practices and meeting the requirements of economic integration;

Strengthening the institutional capacity, improving the status, the autonomy and the accountability of the SBV, including solutions to the organizational restructuring of the SBV system toward being streamlined, highly specialized, efficient and effective in management and administration; Continuing the restructuring in the streamlined, efficient manner in line with the requirements of the administrative reforms and the provision of financial services.

Creating a breakthrough in the administrative reforms, attaching high importance to the intensification of the information technology applications and the modernization of the public administrative services.

Renovation of the monetary policy framework, the management of the forex and gold markets. The monetary policy framework aims at the highest goal which is to control inflation, stabilize the currency value, contributing to maintaining the macroeconomic stability, creating conditions for raising the efficiency of mobilizing and allocating the capital sources in the economy, promoting sustainable growth; Increasing the independence of the SBV in the management of the monetary policy.

Renovating the foreign exchange management framework towards continuing to implement the floating exchange rate policy under control and managing the exchange rates with a higher degree of flexibility, with close monitoring of the developments in the domestic and international financial markets; at the same time, ensuring the compatibility of the macro-monetary balances and the monetary policy objectives in each period. Renovating the management of the State's foreign exchange reserves in line with the international practices and the size of the foreign exchange reserves in each period, ensuring the harmony of the objectives of safety, liquidity and profitability; Implementing comprehensively the measures to substantially eliminate the dollarization of the economy by 2030; Implementing the Scheme on liberalization of capital transactions in line with Vietnam's roadmap for the implementation of the international commitments, which has been approved by the Prime Minister in Decision No.1590/QD-TTg dated August 11th 2016 …

Developing, managing and monitoring key payment systems in the economy; Enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the banking inspection and supervision system in line with the international practices and standards; Developing modern banking products and services, creating a basis for improving access to banking services; Developing a CIs network capable of competing in the domestic market, and step by step enhancing their international competitiveness; developing solutions for those CIs in the forms of cooperatives and micro-finance institutions (MFIs) for the period 2018 - 2020 and 2021-2025. Accordingly, in the period 2021 - 2025, striving to complete the transformation of the cooperative banks into banks of people's credit funds in order to improve the linkage and ensure the operational safety of the system; Continuing to develop policies and mechanisms to encourage and support the development of MFIs, increasing the number of MFIs to increase the access to customer services, and supporting the implementation of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy.

In addition, the Strategy also provides solutions to improve the model of other financial institutions operating in the banking sector such as the Social Policy Bank, VAMC and Deposit Insurance of Vietnam.

Focusing on the development and application of science and technology, the human resources development in the banking sector; Strengthening the international cooperation and speeding up the process of international integration in the banking sector.

Strengthening and improving the efficiency of communication activities of the SBV, attaching importance to building the communication plan of the SBV in each period, contributing to the transparency in policy administration, raising public awareness and increasing public confidence in the banking system.

Together with the sectorial strategies and the projects which have been issued, the Government also assigns the SBV to develop and implement a number of Law Projects, the Sectoral Strategies and the Projects/Schemes to implement this Strategy. The Government assigns the State Bank to assume the prime responsibility as the focal point in coordinating with relevant ministries, agencies and localities in formulating the action programs and the implementation plans; allocating resources for the implementation; researching, amending and supplementing the relevant legal provisions for the implementation of the Strategy. At the same time, the SBV is also tasked with carrying out the information, education and communication (IEC) on this Strategy, the directions, the monetary policies and banking activities.

The Decision takes effect from the date of signing.

VA