Vietnam's banking community is facing its most challenging year since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Although relatively immune from the global credit crunch, Vietnamese banks have not been insulated from some home-made macroeconomic difficulties. Annual inflation in Vietnam has been more than 25% in recent months, and a doubling of the import bill had prompted legitimate concern about the country's balance of payments. These worries peaked at the beginning of summer, and there are now signs that Hanoi's policymakers are pulling the right monetary and administrative levers necessary to apply the brakes to what was becoming a runaway economy.
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