The majority of credit institutions forecast their business performance in the first quarter and the whole year of 2025 will be more positive than that last year, the latest survey of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) shows.

Under the SBV's Q1 2025 survey on business trends of all credit institutions, conducted from November 25 to December 10, 2024, 74.6% and 84.2% of credit institutions predict their business situation to improve in the first quarter and the whole year of 2025, respectively.

In 2025, 85.1% of credit institutions expect their pre-tax profits to grow positively compared to 2024. Only 9.6% of credit institutions are still concerned about negative profit growth in 2025 and 5.3% forecast that their profits will remain unchanged.

According to the survey, in the first quarter of 2025 and the whole year of 2025, credit institutions expect customers' demand for banking services to improve at a greater pace than in the fourth quarter of 2024. In particular, the demand for loans is expected to continue to improve more than the demand for deposits and payments.

However, credit institutions expect to slightly increase the average price of products and services, mainly service fees, in the first quarter and subsequent whole year of 2025.

Credit institutions forecast that the liquidity situation will continue to improve in the first quarter of 2025 and the whole year of 2025, with capital raised to increase by 3.5% in the first quarter of 2025 and 12.8% in 2025.

Capital mobilisation with terms of less than one year is forecast to grow at the same rate as with terms of more than one year in the first quarter of 2025.

Regarding risks, under the latest survey, credit institutions expect that the risk level to be relatively stable in the first quarter and a gradual decrease in 2025. The overall risk level of customer groups still increased slightly in the fourth quarter of 2024 and in the whole year of 2024 compared to 2023, but the growth rate slowed significantly compared to 2023.

Credit institutions said the bad debt ratio tended to decrease in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter and expect the ratio to continue to decrease in the first quarter of 2025.

By the end of 2024, credit institutions estimated that the average bad debts out of credit outstanding loans of the entire banking system were down compared to the expected level in the previous survey and lower than the bad debt ratio at the end of 2023. The institutions forecast that the average bad debts from outstanding loans of the entire banking system, by the end of 2025, will continue to be adjusted down compared to the estimated level at the end of 2024.

According to the survey, the total amount of outstanding loans of the banking system is forecast to increase by 3.4% and 14.2% in the first quarter of 2025 and in 2025, respectively, down 0.2 percentage points from the forecast from the previous survey. The short-term credit growth rate is predicted to be higher than the medium and long-term growth rate in most credit institutions in the first quarter of 2025 and the whole year of 2025./.