UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECTS OF FOREIGN BANK ENTRY, DEREGULATION ON BANK EFFICIENCY IN VIETNAM BY LUONG CONG HOANG MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2017 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECTS OF FOREIGN BANK ENTRY, DEREGULATION ON BANK EFFICIENCY IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By LUONG CONG HOANG Academic Supervisor: PHAM DINH LONG HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2017 2 DECLARATION “I certify the content of this dissertation has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degrees. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, and help received in preparing this dissertation and all source used, have been acknowledged in this dissertation.” Signature Luong Cong Hoang Date: November 10th, 2017 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Foremost, I would sincerely thank Dr. Pham Dinh Long, my supervisor, for his great support and advice in this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Vietnam –Netherlands Program, especially professor Truong Dang Thuy and staffs for their assistance in this thesis.
I also would like to thank all my friends who always standing beside me with encouragement. Lastly, I would like to thank my family for their great support not only in this thesis but also in my life. ii ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of foreign banks entry to the efficiency of Vietnam‘s domestic banks following the government to initiate deregulation its financial banking. We also review the bank efficiency in term of bank size and ownership structure.
There are two principled approaches to assess the efficiency of a bank by data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) methods. In this paper, we apply the SFA method which is suggested by Berger et al. (2009), Ahn, Lee & Achmidt (2001) to estimate the cost and profit efficiency of three groups that includes 100% foreign-owned, big four state-owned and other domestic banks. Based on the initial sample which is collected from the BankScope database from Bureau van Dijk and FitchRatings and also annual reports of 37 banks in Vietnam over the period of 2009 to 2015.
Results indicate that big four state-owned banks are seemly efficiency on both cost and profit approach while the 100% foreign-owned banks are not the most efficiency overall. However, the 100% foreign-owned banks are able to gain economy of scale in revenue while the big four state-owned and other domestic banks hardly take an advantage of economic of scale. All group of bank obtain the diseconomy of scope but the level is different. Key words: foreign banks entry; financial deregulation; bank efficiency; data envelopment analysis (DEA); stochastic frontier analysis (SFA); economy of scope; economy of scale.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DEA Data envelope analysis SFA Stochastic Frontier Analysis SFM Stochastic Frontier Model MLDV Maximum likelihood dummy variable SBV State bank of Vietnam SOCBs State-owned commercial banks JSCBs Joint stock commercial banks CE Cost efficiency PE Profit efficiency TFE True fix effect TRE True random effect TE Technical efficiency AE Allocative efficiency EE Economics efficiency NPLs Non-performance loans LDR Loan to deposit ratio CAR Capital adequacy ratio iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. The evolution of Vietnam’s banking sector.
The research objective. Organization of the thesis. 7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. The theoretical literature.
Theory of productivity and efficiency. The method of efficiency measurement. Data envelope analysis (DEA). Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).
Economy of scope and economy of scale. International research of foreign bank efficiency. 21 CHAPTER 3: DATA AND METHODOLOGY. 29 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
50 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Laws of domestic banks and foreign banks .4 Table 2: A snapshot of Vietnamese Banks in 2015 (bil VND).7 Table 3: An overview of development of SFA’s method .16 Table 4: Data sample over the period 2009-2015 .29 Table 5: Overview of the variables of cost and profit function.31 Table 6: summary statistics of variables in period of 2009-2015 .32 Table 7: Market share of total assets, 2009-2015 (%) .34 Table 8: The mean value of ROA, ROE, 2009-2015.37 Table 9: The loan-to-deposit ratio, 2009 – 2015 (%) .37 Table 10: Mean value of cost and profit efficiency, 2009–2015.37 Table 11: Mean value of the measured overall cost efficiency, 2009-2015.39 Table 12: Mean value of the measured overall profit efficiency, 2009-2015.39 Table 13: The economy of scope for three groups of bank: 2009 - 2015 .41 Table 14: The economy of scale of banks: 2009 - 2015 .43 Table 15: Net interest income and non-interest income, 2009-2015.44 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Structure of banking system in Vietnam .4 Figure 2: Economic efficiency following input approach .10 Figure 3: Economic efficiency following output approach .11 Figure 4: Economic of scale from the cost approach .18 Figure 5: The stochastic production frontier .25 Figure 6: Market share of total assets, 2009-2015 (%) .35 Figure 7: The ratio of total cost to total assets .35 Figure 8: Return of assets (ROA).36 Figure 9: Return of equity (ROE) .36 Figure 10: Cost and profit efficiency based on time-variant specification .38 Figure 11: Cost and profit efficiency, 2009-2015.39 Figure 12: Cost efficiency, 2009-2015.41 Figure 13: Profit efficiency, 2009-2015.41 Figure 14: The economy of scope, 2009-2015.42 Figure 15: Number of branches, 2016.47 vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Problem statements Banks are notable institutions in any society since they importantly contribute to the development of the economics system. Via operations, banks connect the surplus and deficit capital economic agents. Due to the power of financial intermediation of banking industry, there are many empirical studies with the goal to enhance the bank efficiency and stability.
There have been many changes in the business environment in recent years. Because of the boom of economics, globalization, deregulation and technological innovation. This leads to the competitive pressure and instability of banks industry. Rosengard & Du (2009) describes financial deregulation as the transition from a closed to a competitive financial system.
To more specific, with banking system, it means that the transfer of bank from monopoly or oligopoly, where have a restriction on competition, bank entry, expansion, and diversify, to an open and more competitive in banking system. The government make an effort to create “a level playing field” not only between privately owned banks and public sector banks, but also between foreign banks and domestic banks. This paper examines the impact of bank deregulation on Vietnamese banking efficiency. We consider which bank efficiency has improved after financial deregulation.
Instead of comparing the consequence of deregulation with the consequence of without deregulation, we evaluate the performance of Vietnamese’s domestic banks by using the outcome of foreign banks as the benchmark. In line with Claessens et al. (2001) believed that in developing countries like Vietnam, foreign banks were more efficient than the domestic banks. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that foreign banks have got a superior governing structure and organization, skilled labor force and technical innovations.
No previous research in Vietnam uses a set of data including foreign banks before. 1 Farrell (1957), who is the first person introducing the theory of efficiency. He clarified 3 kinds of efficiency: technical efficiency (TE), allocative efficiency (AE) and economics efficiency (EE). A bank has been seen as efficiency when they have obtained a maximum level of outputs from a given group of inputs or obtained a given level of outputs from using less than the minimum inputs (technical efficiency); and allocative efficiency, which estimates the ability of the bank to treat inputs in optimal ratios given their prices.
The economic efficiency is reflected by the multiplication of allocative and technical efficiency. In the literature, we may measure the cost and profit efficiency as the duel of the economic efficiency. To more specific, the cost efficiency estimates how to minimize the cost to achieve a given level of outputs. Based on the cost function that total costs depend on an amount of outputs, price of inputs, inefficiency and error term.
In meanwhile, the profit efficiency analysis measures how to attain the maximum achievable profit with a given level of inputs. It may be similarly estimated as the cost function by changing some variables. Following the previous research, there are two main approaches to assessing the efficiency of banks, data envelope analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). The first, founded by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (1978), DEA is a non- parametric technique applying the linear programming technique to set the best practices.
The second, in meanwhile, developed by Aigner et al., Meeusen and Van den Broeck (1977), SFA is a parametric technique which distinguishes the residuals from an estimated function into a stochastic error term and an efficiency. Instead of using the DEA approach, we apply the SFA estimation procedures suggested by Berger et al. We estimate the cost and profit efficiency depend on a given inputs and outputs factors of foreign, big four and other domestic banks. Based on the dataset from Bankscope (Bureau van Dijk) and some missing value has been collected by the annual report of 37 banks for the post-WTO period of 2009-2015, we find that foreign banks are not the most efficiency overall but big four is seemly efficiency on both cost and profit approach.
We also discuss the reasons behind this results. The evolution of Vietnam’s banking sector Bank industry is perceived both an opportunity access to modern technologies for enhancing market efficiency, and the challenge amid increasingly fierce competition from financial deregulation. This mean that the transition from a banking monopoly or oligopoly, where constraint of competition, market entry, expansion, and diversification, to an open and competitive banking system. Before 1945, Vietnam was a feudal-colonial country under the French colonialists’ rule.
The banking and credit system namely Indo China bank was established to serve the French colonialists. During the period of 1945 – 1986, the Vietnam’s banking system had functioned as a mono-banking model and had not been market-oriented (Siregar, 1999). At that time, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) was playing as a government’s budget tool, a vehicle for government policies by supplying fiscal resources to the State and financing for State Owned Commercial Banks (SOCs). All financial transactions had been controlled through SBV which functioned both as a central bank and as a commercial bank.
However, after the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party in 1986, the banking system of Vietnam was transformed from one-tier into two-tier. Specifically, SBV primarily acted as a central bank which responsible for limiting monetary policy and managing commercial banks. The banking operations such as currency trading, forex, payment, credit and banking services in line with law are be conducted by the commercial banks and credit institutions. 3 Figure 1: Structure of banking system in Vietnam The State bank of Vietnam State-owned Joint-stock commercial commercial Foreign banks banks banks (Source: the State Bank of Vietnam, 2016) The main purpose of this reform is to diversify ownership, enhance private monitoring, improve stability and maximize competition.
To more specific, the authorization of JSCBs (Joint Stock Commercial Banks) was established in the 1990s and foreign banks have been licensed to participate in a type of branches or joint ventures with domestic banks. However, the government conducted some laws which were further restrict foreign banks entry in term of products, a possibility of operations and registered capital. Table 1: Laws of domestic banks and foreign banks Domestic banks Foreign banks 100% Registered capital: No less - Registered capital no less Requirements than 3000 billion VND for than 3000 billion VND for all commercial banks.