The performance of credit institutions has shown improvement, with their total assets increasing after a sharp drop in January. Accordingto the State Bank of Vietnam's (SBV's) latest report, the total assetsof the credit institution system amounted to more than 6,449 trillionVND (297 billion USD) by the end of March, up 58.849 trillion VND (2.71billion USD) against the end of February. However, if compared with the end of 2014, the total assets still declined 1.01 percent. Thetotal charter capital of the system also inched up 0.31 percent to436.998 trillion VND (20.1 billion USD), while the total equity capitalrose 5.4 percent to 523.779 trillion VND (24.1 billion USD). Thesystem showed a return on equity of 6.43 percent, up 0.94 percent fromthe end of 2014. The respective figures were at 8.2 percent forState-owned commercial banks, 5.6 percent for joint-stock commercialbanks, 4.29 percent for foreign and joint venture banks and 10.25percent for financial leasing companies, all rising from the end of2014. The system's return on assets reached 0.57 percent, up 0.06 percent from the end of 2014. Thecapital adequacy ratio (CAR) of the system also increased to 13.46percent, up from 13.42 percent at the end of February and 12.75 percentat the end of 2014. The CAR allowed by the central bank is only 9percent. By the end of March 2015, the system's ratio of short-termcapital used for medium- and long-term loans was 25.47 percent.-VNA