A bank teller counts US dollar at a transaction office in Hanoi. Banks gained impressive profits from the forex trading in the context that the US dollar has surged rapidly since the beginning of April this year. (Photo: VNA) Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam(Vietcombank) topped the list with a profit of 4.6 trillion VND (nearly 200million USD) from forex trading in the period, up 43% compared to the sameperiod last year. With the high result, forex was the best growth segment inVietcombank’s core businesses. The rise was 2.4 times the growth rate of thebank’s total operating income.
At Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank of Industry and Trade (Vietinbank),net profit from forex business soared by more than 80% to hit a record high of 2.4trillion VND, while the bank’s total income grew by only 20.6%.
Similarly, Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment andDevelopment of Vietnam (BIDV) gained 2 trillion VND, up 62% over the sameperiod last year. Forex was the fastest-growing source of the bank’s revenue inthe first nine months of the year.
Preliminary statistics showed the net profit from forex trading ofthe above three State-owned commercial banks in the first nine months reachedmore than 9 trillion VND, accounting for about 60% of the total net profit of27 listed banks. In which, Vietcombank gained nearly one-third of the totalprofit.
In the group of private banks, Military Joint Stock CommercialBank (MB), Maritime Joint Stock Commercial Bank (MSB), Sai Gon Thuong Tin JointStock Commercial Bank (Sacombank) and HCM City Development Joint StockCommercial Bank (HDBank) also earned large profits from forex with quite highgrowth rates.
Specifically, net profit from this segment of MB and Sacombanksurged by around 45% over the same period last year to 1.3 trillion VND and 759billion VND, respectively.
Meanwhile, HDBank and MSB gained nearly 200 billion VND and 889billion VND from the forex business in the first nine months, 2.3 and 3.2 timesthe figures of the same period last year, respectively.
Many mid-sized private banks also fetched hundreds of billions ofVND of profits from forex business, such as Vietnam Joint Stock ExportImport Bank (Eximbank) with 351 billion VND (up 32.5%), Tien Phong Joint StockCommercial Bank (TPBank) with 330 billion VND (nearly three times as much asthe level of the same period last year), Southeast Asia Joint Stock CommercialBank (SeAbank) with 144 billion VND (up 32%).
Notably, An Bình Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ABBank) recordedprofit of 639 billion VND, up 38% over the same period, and was the secondlargest source of the bank’s revenue.
Banks gained impressive profits from forex trading in the contextthat the US dollar has surged rapidly since the beginning of April this year.Compared with the end of 2021, the dollar has currently risen by more than8% against the Vietnamese dong. According to a financial expert, the higher theexchange rate is, the more profitable the banks are.
In fact, in the banks’ forex business, most of their net profitscome from spot forex trading, or the gap between the buying and the sellingprice. For example, spot trading brought Vietcombank 85% of its revenue and allnet profit in the forex business segment. Similarly, spot trading was also themain source of income in the forex business segment of VietinBank and BIDV.
Meanwhile, the gap between the buying and selling prices of thedollar listed at banks remained at more than 300 VND per dollar, much higherthan the 200 VND rate in the same period in 2021. The large gap helped banksget a higher profit margin on each transaction. Besides, the trading volume ofthe dollar also increased against 2021.
In addition, the banks’ profits from forex trading also came fromthe gap between the dollar buying and selling price of commercial banks and theState Bank of Vietnam (SBV). Since April, the selling price of the dollar atcommercial banks has been often much higher than that of the SBV.
In mid-July, the gap between the dollar selling price atcommercial banks and the SBV’s transaction office even reached 150-200 VND perdollar. The SBV has so far sold more than 20 billion USD to commercial banks tostabilise the domestic forex market./.
VNA
