Vietnam’s Government has asked the country’s central bank and finance ministry to study lifting the share of idle state funds commercial banks can hold, a move that effectively turns the State Treasury into a backstop for a banking system straining under double-digit credit demand. Resolution 168/NQ-CP, issued on June 27, tasks the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) with considering an increase in the ratio of State Treasury time deposits placed at commercial banks to supplement banking system liquidity.
Hanoi Taps a New Liquidity Lever for Banks
The resolution is the latest in a sequence of measures Vietnam is rolling out to chase an official 2026 GDP growth target of at least 10 per cent, an outcome that requires the economy to expand by 11.9 per cent in the second half of the year. The Treasury deposit lever sits alongside directives on interest-rate stability, foreign-exchange oversight and credit-cap adjustments. Under the current rule, the MoF may place up to 50 per cent of temporarily idle state funds in term deposits at commercial banks; Resolution 168 lets the ministry set that cap and, if necessary, exceed it. “The MoF and the SBV need to closely coordinate the management of State Treasury deposits in commercial banks to support short-term capital for the economy,” the resolution states.
The change comes against a backdrop the Government itself has flagged as challenging. Reports from ministries and localities project full-year growth at 8.7 per cent, leaving a gap of more than one percentage point to the double-digit target. The global and regional outlook during the first half of 2026 was shaped by the conflict in the Middle East, the resolution said, which significantly affected the Vietnamese economy.
Inside the banking system, the gap between lending and deposits has been widening for years. SBV Monetary Policy Department head Pham Chi Quang said on July 2 that, on average over 2021 to 2025, deposit growth ran 3.8 percentage points below credit growth. By mid-June 2026, that gap had narrowed to more than 2 per cent, but the direction had not.
Why the Big Four State Banks Feel the Lift First
The Treasury deposit mechanism is not symmetric. Vietnamese rules treat the deposits differently from retail or corporate deposits when banks calculate how much they can lend. Circular 08/2026, effective May 16, replaced the legacy LDR framework with a new credit-to-deposit ratio (CDR), and within that formula only 20 per cent of State Treasury term deposits are counted on the funding side. Circular 25/2026, which took effect on July 1, adds a provision allowing the SBV Governor to decide on a different ratio in each period. Resolution 168 now lets the MoF expand the pool of Treasury deposits that banks can absorb above the 50 per cent ceiling that has applied for years.
The deposits are also concentrated. State-owned commercial banks held more than VND400 trillion, equivalent to US$15.2 billion, of State Treasury deposits by the end of 2025, according to market data tracked by SGGP. Four lenders sit on the bulk of that pool: Agribank, BIDV, Vietcombank and VietinBank, the so-called Big Four state-owned banks. Their share is what makes the policy a quiet form of state-bank recapitalisation through the funding side of the balance sheet.
Nguyen Minh Tuan, chief executive of AFA Capital, told SGGP that the continued inclusion of 20 per cent of State Treasury deposits is the most effective short-term solution, and that the Big Four could gain an additional credit capacity of roughly VND80 trillion to VND100 trillion, equivalent to US$3 billion to US$3.8 billion, from the deposits already concentrated at those four banks. The lift comes without any new capital raise from the lenders themselves.
The system-wide loan-to-deposit ratio stood near 112 per cent at the end of March 2026, according to SSI Securities research cited by SGGP, well above the 85 per cent regulatory ceiling. The CDR framework recalibrates how that pressure shows up, but it does not erase it. State-owned banks, already holding the largest Treasury balances, can take advantage of the new ratio faster than smaller lenders can. The structural tilt toward the Big Four is the consequence of Resolution 168 that the headline numbers do not immediately reveal.
| Bank group | State Treasury deposits held (end-2025) | Additional credit capacity under CDR |
|---|---|---|
| Big Four state-owned banks (Agribank, BIDV, Vietcombank, VietinBank) | More than VND400 trillion (US$15.2 billion) | VND80 trillion to VND100 trillion (US$3 billion to US$3.8 billion) |
| Joint-stock commercial banks | Smaller balances, not separately disclosed | Continue to compete for retail deposits at 6.5 to 7.8 per cent |
What the Central Bank Said at Its July Briefing
At the SBV’s regular press conference on July 2, 2026, the central bank struck a careful tone on Resolution 168. Deputy Director of the Department of System Safety of Credit Institutions Vu Le Tung Giang told reporters that increasing the ratio of State Treasury deposits counted under the CDR formula will not by itself lift bank liquidity, since those funds are already in use. He added, however, that the move may expand the scale of credit that commercial banks can extend.
The session made one structural point plain. Pham Chi Quang, head of the SBV’s Monetary Policy Department, said liquidity for the system is not the product of any single measure but of a combination of synchronised tools, including open market operations, refinancing and foreign-exchange swaps. The Treasury deposit change is one input in that toolkit, not a substitute for the central bank’s own liquidity windows.
On average, during the period 2021-2025, deposit growth was 3.8% lower than credit growth.
Deputy Governor Pham Thanh Ha told the briefing that credit institutions need to keep a reserve for liquidity in case Treasury funds are suddenly withdrawn, a warning that the new room has limits. She also noted that banks must still meet prudential safety indicators even as the CDR formula widens their balance-sheet scope.
The Deposit-Rate Race Already Underway
The deposit-rate pressure is already visible on bank rate sheets. Six-month deposit rates at private joint-stock lenders such as VPBank, Techcombank, HDBank and TPBank now range from 6.5 to 7.2 per cent a year. Twelve-month deposits at the same lenders reach 7 to 7.8 per cent, with smaller banks and special programmes topping 7.8 per cent.
State-owned banks have moved too, but more cautiously. Vietcombank, BIDV, VietinBank and Agribank have lifted long-term deposit rates to around 5.5 to 6.2 per cent. The narrower range reflects both their larger funding base and the implicit backing their balance sheets carry. The rate gap between the Big Four and the next tier is what smaller lenders are trying to close by offering richer returns to retail depositors.
Twelve lenders reported declines in customer deposits between end-2025 and Q1 2026, according to quarterly data from 27 listed banks compiled by The Investor, including BIDV, MBBank, Techcombank, ACB, VIB, TPBank, SeABank, Eximbank, OCB, Nam A Bank, KienlongBank and BaoViet Bank. The recovery in credit disbursement has been too rapid, a treasury executive at a joint-stock commercial bank told The Investor, forcing many lenders to lift rates to keep liquidity safety ratios in line. The funding gap that drives those moves is now structural: dong deposits sit roughly VND2,000 trillion below total outstanding credit across the banking system. Banks are using longer-tenor certificates of deposit, international bonds, syndicated foreign loans and the interbank market to bridge it, but each substitute carries a different cost, and the race is now a feature of the funding mix, not a passing spike.
- Construction at 17.6 per cent
- Accommodation and food services at 17.3 per cent
- Electricity production at 16.9 per cent
The 11.9 Percent Hanoi Needs to Hit
The full-year growth target is at least 10 per cent. Reports from ministries and localities put the current trajectory at 8.7 per cent, leaving more than one percentage point to close. To clear the bar, Resolution 168 states GDP must expand by 11.9 per cent in the second half of 2026, an outturn that would require the strongest half-year expansion in years.
The half-year split reflects what the data already shows. Vietnam’s economy grew 7.83 per cent year-on-year in Q1 2026 and 8.39 per cent in Q2, lifting H1 growth to 8.18 per cent. The acceleration from Q1 to Q2 is what makes 11.9 per cent in H2 conceivable, even if ambitious. The Government has assigned sector-level H2 targets to push that pace.
Provincial growth assignments follow the same logic. HCM City has been set a full-year GRDP target of 10.2 per cent, Hanoi 11 per cent, Hai Phòng and Quảng Ninh 13 per cent, Bắc Ninh 12.5 per cent, Hưng Yên 11.5 per cent and Đà Nẵng 11.22 per cent. Hải Phòng posted the strongest H1 reading at 12.42 per cent. The constraint is funding, not ambition, and Resolution 168’s Treasury deposit lever is one of the few fiscal tools that can be deployed without a budget vote.
What Analysts Say Could Break the Plan
Forecasts from the major ratings agencies and brokerages point in the same direction. Fitch Ratings said Vietnam’s banking system liquidity will likely stay tight in the near term, pressuring lending margins and profitability. Fitch also warned that an expansion of the SBV’s 15 per cent credit-growth quota for 2026 could intensify deposit competition and further compress margins, a caution that even the headline target is itself a margin risk.
Can Van Luc, a member of the National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council, told a recent financial conference that current liquidity pressure stems from three simultaneous factors: recovering credit demand, USD/VND exchange-rate pressure, and capital shifting toward higher-yielding investment channels. “In a context where credit growth exceeds deposit growth, deposit rates are unlikely to fall deeply as they did previously,” Luc said. “The SBV will prioritize macroeconomic and exchange-rate stability over aggressive monetary easing.” VNDirect Securities said there is limited room left for further policy-rate cuts because of exchange-rate and inflation risks, and that deposit rates for six-to-twelve-month tenors are forecast to stay around 6.5 to 8 per cent a year. Fitch separately reported that credit grew 19.1 per cent in 2025, lifting credit-to-GDP to about 145 per cent, and warned that rapid credit expansion can steer lending to speculative uses, raising the risk of a later correction.
Who Gains and Who Pays as the Rules Shift
Resolution 168 narrows a contest the banking sector has been running for two years. The Treasury deposit channel, when expanded, gives outsized room to the lenders that already hold the deposits. The cost lands on smaller joint-stock banks, which must keep chasing retail deposits at rates above 7 per cent to stabilise their funding books.
Capital-raising plans across the sector underline the gap. Techcombank plans to lift charter capital by more than 60 per cent to VND113.7 trillion, VPBank to above VND106.2 trillion, and MB to above VND100 trillion. State-owned Vietcombank plans a private placement of up to 6.5 per cent of its shares to strategic investors, combined with a share issuance from reserve funds, to push charter capital close to VND100 trillion.
Resolution 168 sets a 2026 credit-growth target of 15 per cent, a level banks have already exceeded in 2025. The Treasury deposit channel is now a way to give a subset of banks more balance-sheet room without lifting rates on retail depositors, which would compound the cost-of-living pressure the Government is also trying to manage. For the Big Four, the move is a quiet, fiscal-side recapitalisation; for everyone else, it is a reminder that the funding race continues.
The MoF and SBV are now coordinating on a specific cap for fixed-term deposits at commercial banks, a number that will turn Resolution 168’s directive into a balance-sheet reality. Resolution 168 was issued on June 27, Circular 25 took effect on July 1, and the SBV’s press briefing was on July 2, and each step narrows the room for delay. The full lift, in the form of higher MoF-set Treasury deposit caps and any CDR-ratio adjustment, will land in the H2 data the Government is asking banks to underwrite.
- 10 per cent Vietnam’s 2026 GDP growth target under Resolution 168
- VND400 trillion (US$15.2 billion) State Treasury deposits held at the Big Four, end-2025
- 20 per cent share of Treasury term deposits counted under Circular 08’s CDR formula
- 50 per cent current cap on idle Treasury funds placed in commercial bank deposits (Resolution 168 lets the MoF exceed it)
- 11.9 per cent GDP growth required in H2 2026 to clear the full-year 10 per cent target
