Hanoi (VNA) - After gaining positive business performance last year, many banks have planned to hold annual general meetings (AGMs) for 2018 soon.

The Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB) announced last week that it would hold its AGM on March 29.

The deadline for shareholders to register for the meeting is February 22.

MB has also planned to elect one additional member to its Supervisory Board for the 2014-19 period at the meeting.

The Vietnam Export and Import Commercial Bank will hold its AGM on April 27 at Sheraton Saigon Hotel. The bank will elect two additional members to its Board of Directors at the meeting.

The Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank is expected to hold its AGM on March 29.

The Sai Gon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank will close its shareholders list to take part in its AGM on February 2 and is expected to hold the meeting on April 20. In 2018, the bank aims to speed up restructuring and become the top retail bank in Vietnam and other neighbouring countries.

The Lien Viet Post Commercial Joint Stock Bank plans to hold its shareholders’ meeting on March 28.

According to the leaders of many banks, the banking sector still faces challenges despite achieving positive results in 2017. They said they would carefully consider business targets before submitting them at the upcoming AGMs.

A report from the National Financial Supervisory Committee (NFSC) estimated that the pre-tax profits of the banking sector in 2017 rose by more than 40 percent over the previous year, while after-tax profits surged by 44.5 percent.

Business performance of commercial banks is forecast to continue its upward trend this year. According to a State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s business sentiment survey released recently, which covered domestic and foreign commercial banks in Vietnam, 71.8 percent of the respondents expected better results in Q1 2018 compared with Q4 2017 and 88.6 percent hoped their business performance this entire year will further improve against last year, of which 29.2 percent anticipated "significant improvement."

Up to 92.6 percent of the correspondents forecast their pre-tax profit in 2018 would rise compared with last year, helping the average growth rate of the entire banking system reach 19.33 percent, much higher than the 13.4 percent forecast in a survey conducted at the same time last year.

A total of 78.1 percent of the correspondents also expected customer demands for banking services, especially lending, this year will increase in comparison with last year. The rate for Q1 2018 alone is 59 percent.-VNA