The State Bank of Vietnam published a readout of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s New Year visit and the central bank’s leadership briefing, setting out the banking sector’s priorities for 2025 under Government Resolutions 01 and 02. The focus is on running monetary policy flexibly to support growth while maintaining macroeconomic stability, controlling inflation and keeping the money market stable, alongside measures to safeguard banking system safety. Key tasks highlighted include reducing costs to help lower lending rates, directing credit to priority sectors and programmes such as social housing and infrastructure, and continuing to deal with weak banks and control non-performing loans. SBV also positioned digital transformation as a core workstream, including building sector-wide databases linked to Project 06 and strengthening the security and safety of payments and banking operations. In the same briefing, SBV reported that policy rates were kept unchanged in 2024 despite high global rates, the exchange rate was managed flexibly, and gold market management focused on keeping the SJC gold bar price gap to international prices within an appropriate range. Credit to the economy was estimated to have grown about 15.08% by 31 December 2024, supported by targeted programmes including a VND 145 trillion lending package for social housing, worker housing and renovation of old apartment buildings, as well as credit for forestry and fisheries and support for customers affected by storm No. 3.

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