VietNamNet Bridge – The managers of Eximbank, a big joint stock commercial bank, received VND243 million a month in 2012. The figures were VND190 million for ACB and VND149 million for Sacombank.

The report released by KPMG, an auditing firm, has surprised many people, because it pointed out that the wage fund gobbled up over 50 percent of total expenses of banks in 2012, while bank officers complained they got lower pay than the previous years.

The banks’ reports showed that the pays to bank officers were relatively high, about VND20-30 million, in the first months of 2013. However, the officers have denied the high income, saying that their actual incomes were much lower than the average levels announced.

At some banks, officers got VND2 million a month only. An officer of the Military Bank, one of the biggest joint stock banks in Vietnam, said he got VND5-6 million a month.

The problem stems from the sky high pays for managers, which made the average income high despite the low income of normal workers.

In principle, the pays to the members of the boards of directors, supervision and management must be approved by the annual shareholders’ meeting after considering the business performance of the banks.

To date, most of the joint stock banks have released the shareholders’ meeting’s resolutions. However, not all of them have made public the pays for the managers.

ACB has been found as having the highest fund for paying to managers in 2012, about VND44 billion. However, with the high number of 19 members of the three boards, each of them received VND2.3 billion in the year, or VND192 million a month only.

However, the President of ACB was not the banker who received the highest pay. The best paid was Le Hung Dung, President of Eximbank.

The wage fund for the three boards of Eximbank in 2012 was VND32.1 billion, or 1.5 percent of post tax profit. As such, each member of the bank’s leadership pocketed 2.9 billion in 2012, or VND243 million a month, the highest level found on the data made public.

Sacombank also paid high to its managers. Each of them got VND149.2 million a month, or VND1.8 billion in 2012. The wage fund for the managers accounted for 2.5 percent of the post tax profit of the bank. Meanwhile, the wage fund would be cut to 2 percent of post tax profit in 2013.

Meanwhile, the biggest banks in Vietnam such as Vietcombank, Vietinbank and SHB after the merger, reportedly paid the salaries which were “modest” if compared with some other banks.

Vietcombank’s managers, for example, got VND68.5 million a month, SHB VND74.7 million, and Vietinbank VND73.2 million.

KPMG has noted the tendency of banks to cut down the workforce. ACB, for example, cut down 7 percent of the total personnel, or 568 officers, just in the last six months. Ironically, ACB led the banking system last year in the number of new workers recruited.

46 percent of commercial banks said they would not expand the workforce in 2013. Of the other 54 percent of banks which plan to increase the number of workers, 90 percent said the increases would be not big.

In 2005-2011, the number of banking workers increased by two folds from 125,000 to over 200,000.

US$1 = VND21,000

Manh Ha