Hanoi (VNS/VNA) — Many banks have gained significant profi꧟tincreases from foreign exchange (forex) trading this year, figures show.

According to banks’ Q3 2020financial statements, 15 banks reported high profits in the business segment inthe first three quarters of this year with some even posting rising rates ofhundreds of percent over the same period last year. Commercial Joint Stock Bank forForeign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) was the biggest earner with more than 2.96trillion VND (128.6 million USD) of net profit from forex trading, up by 16.9percent over the same period of 2019 and accounting for 8.6 percent of thebank’s total operating income. Commercial Joint Stock Bank forIndustry and Trade of Vietnam (VietinBank) ranked second with 1.51 trillion VNDof forex trading net profit, up by 27.3 percent over the same period of lastyear, contributing 4.7 percent to the bank’s total operating income. Other large banks such asCommercial Joint Stock Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV),Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) and MilitaryCommercial Joint Stock Bank (MBB) also posted significant profits from forextrading. As for medium- and small-sizedbanks, though the proportion of profits from forex trading accounted for amodest rate in the banks’ total profits, the growth rate was impressive. Tien Phong Commercial JointStock Bank (TPBank), for example, is one of the banks that achieved thestrongest profit growth from forex trading in the period with a rise of 468 percentto 142 billion VND. Similarly, Southeast AsiaCommercial Joint Stock Bank (SeABank) also recorded a surge of 226.7 percent to49 billion VND in forex trading. The forex trading profit of NamA Commercial Joint Stock Bank (NamABank) also soared to 51 billion VND in thefirst three quarters of 2020 from 19 billion VND in the same period last year. Other banks such as MaritimeCommercial Joint Stock Bank (MSB) and Saigon Hanoi Commercial Joint StockBank (SHB) gained more than 100 percent growth in forex trading profit in thepast period, at 134 percent and 131.6 percent, respectively. In the forex trading business,most of the net profit comes from the foreign currency spot trading, whichmeans that the income comes from the gap between buying and selling prices. The demand for foreign currencytransactions of the economy were significantly expanded in the past ninemonths. According to the General Statistics Office, the country’s total exportand import turnover reached nearly 389 billion USD in the last nine months, up1.8 percent over the same period of 2019. Besides, banks also conducted alarge amount of foreign currency transactions with the State Bank of Vietnamwhen the central bank accelerated buying of the US dollar to increase thenation’s forex reserves. In the past nine months, thecentral bank purchased about 14 billion USD, raising the total forex reservesto a record high level of 93 billion USD./.