Habubank says beat 2009 gross profit goal

VNStockNews.com - Vietnam's partly private Habubank, 10 percent owned by Deutsche Bank, said on Monday gross profit beat its own forecast by 26 percent last year, rising to 505 billion dong ($27 million).

The unlisted Hanoi-based bank had initially projected a gross profit of 400 billion dong, the statement released at a year-end meeting said.

The lender reported profit growth last year after a 3.7 percent contraction in 2008 to 352 billion dong, partly due to higher provisions for credit risk.

Habubank, also known as Hanoi Building Bank, has not released its net profit for 2009, but said in a statement the bank "has developed sustainably on the ground of achieving safety targets on par and higher than international standards".

In December 2009, the lender said it raised its registered capital by 7 percent to 3 trillion dong, a year before the deadline the central bank set for small lenders in Vietnam.

Habubank Deputy Chief Executive Nguyen Du Huong said the bank's assets rose 23.8 percent to 29.24 trillion dong ($1.58 billion) last year, as loans jumped 27 percent to 13.36 trillion dong.

She said overdue debt fell to 2.24 percent of loans last year, from 2.84 percent in 2008.

The year-end assets ranked Habubank as Vietnam's 14th-largest partly private lender.
Deposits rose 27.59 percent to 25.5 trillion dong.

"We aim for a growth of 30 percent to 50 percent for main targets this year," Huong told reporters at the meeting, adding that specific targets for 2010 would need shareholder approval.

Vietnam's central bank aims to keep the country's credit growth this year at 25 percent, after a jump of about 38 percent in 2009 stoked fears of a return to high inflation.

"We do not have any pressure from the central bank," Huong told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Major banks, such as Agribank and BIDV, have to observe the sector's growth target carefully, bankers said.

Last Friday, the central bank asked the country's largest bank by assets, Agribank, to slow lending this year to a rate of at least 20 percent, after the bank's loans jumped 24.4 percent last year, a state-run newspaper said.

Hanoi-based unlisted BIDV reported credit growth of 29.2 percent last year to 193 trillion dong.

Habubank competes against 38 partly private banks in the country of more than 86 million people, of whom 22 percent had bank accounts in 2009, up from 17 percent in 2008. (Reuters)