Hanoi-based banks have achieved half the year's credit growth target of 13-15 percent within the first four months of 2015.

According to the Hanoi Statistics Office, the capital's credit is estimated to rise 6.6 percent against December last year to 1.077 trillion VND (49.86 million USD) in January-April, an estimated increase of 0.8 percent compared with the previous month.

The high credit growth proved that the economy's capacity to absorb capital had improved significantly, the office noted.

Industry insiders also said that the growth was a good signal since the country had always seen negative credit growth in the first months of previous years.

However, they called it a reasonable outcome since the entire economy had seen a significant recovery recently.

Dinh Duc Quang, Deputy Director of Ocean Commercial Bank, told Dau tu chung khoan (Securities Investment) magazine that the credit growth was due to real demand for capital and was therefore sustainable. He contrasted that with similar strong growth in the final part of the year, which was attributable to banks looking for a way to increase lending to achieve their targets rather than due to real demand.

Besides credit growth, the capital mobilisation of Hanoi-based banks is also estimated to rise 5.5 percent from December 2014 to 1.257 trillion VND (58.19 million USD).

Long-term capital mobilisation from 12 months onwards is estimated to account for 30.5 percent of total mobilisation. Mobilisation in Vietnamese dong is estimated to account for 80.9 percent of total mobilisation.-VNA