The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has said today that credit growth declined by .6 percent in January, VN Express is reporting. This is after the SBV set a target for the year of 15 percent and for the first quarter of the year of 4.4 percent. It also follows a bumper December for loans in which credit growth grew by 4.35 percent.

Last year, credit growth was lacklustre at best growing on average at .83 percent a month. This was on the back of a significant fall in demand as business struggled to attract new orders and burned through inventories avoiding buying new stock. In December, however, credit growth shot up like a rocket with Vietnam’s banks embarking on some pretty aggressive marketing campaigns. Most of this, however, looks to have been consumer credit and therefore difficult to sustain–businesses borrow, invest, and hopefully grow and then borrow more. Consumers, on the other, more often than not simply spend.