The State Bank of Vietnam published a year-end briefing on banking sector performance in 2025 and the focus for 2026, highlighting continued credit expansion, unchanged policy rates and ongoing efforts to channel lending to priority sectors while strengthening digital payments and fraud controls. As of 24/12/2025, outstanding credit to the economy exceeded VND 18.40 quadrillion, up 17.87% from end-2024, with credit reported as concentrated in production and business and other priority areas. The central bank kept its policy rates unchanged, continued to press credit institutions to cut operating costs to support lower lending rates and maintained liquidity support via daily open market operations repos and foreign exchange swap transactions; the average interest rate on new commercial bank loans stood at 6.96% per year as of 30/11/2025. Targeted credit programmes cited included the agriculture, forestry and fisheries programme scaled up to VND 185 trillion, with cumulative disbursements of about VND 168 trillion to around 52,200 borrowers by end-November, and a VND 500 trillion programme for investment in electricity, transport and strategic technology infrastructure with participating banks committing to preferential rates at least 1.0–1.5 percentage points below their own average rates for the same tenors. On payments, non-cash transactions in the first 11 months of 2025 rose 42.34% by volume and 22.59% by value year on year, while the SIMO suspicious account monitoring system generated more than 2.4 million customer warnings by 28/12/2025, leading to over 776,000 transactions being paused or cancelled for a total value exceeding VND 2.9 trillion. Cross-border retail QR payment links were reported as completed with Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, and the Vietnam–China QR system has entered official operation for Chinese visitors paying in Vietnam, with payments by Vietnamese customers in China planned to be rolled out from 2026.
State Bank of Vietnam 2025-12-29
State Bank of Vietnam reports 17.87% credit growth in 2025 and outlines 2026 banking priorities
The State Bank of Vietnam's year-end briefing highlighted a 17.87% increase in outstanding credit to VND 18.40 quadrillion, focusing on priority sectors and unchanged policy rates. Key initiatives include targeted credit programs for agriculture and infrastructure, and enhanced digital payment systems, including cross-border QR payment links with neighboring countries. The SIMO system flagged over 2.4 million suspicious transactions, resulting in significant transaction pauses or cancellations.