In 2023, credit growth was lower than expected but improved significantly in the last months of the year. The low credit growth was primarily due to inflation, high lending interest rates, weak economy, low exports and real estate market freezing. However, analysts believed credit will increase significantly again in 2024 thanks to a loose monetary policy and a low interest rate environment. In that context, the banking industry, which is sensitive to interest rates, will be the first to benefit. In fact, the State Bank of Vietnam has also targeted commercial banks to focus on lending right at the beginning of this year. Instead of only allocating a part of credit growth quota for banks at the beginning of the year as previously, the central bank this year has assigned the entire credit growth target of 15% for banks from January./.