“Wall Streets” in Saigon   Transaction offices of Vietcombank, ABBank, and GPBank are seen next to each other on Nguyen Van Troi Street in Ho Chi Minh City October 23, 2013. Tuoi Tre   Transaction offices of Vietcombank, ABBank, and GPBank are seen next to each other on Nguyen Van Troi Street in Ho Chi Minh City October 23, 2013. Tuoi Tre Phan Thi Dung cannot remember all of the bank branches and transaction offices situated on the same street as her house as there are too many to count. The 3 Thang 2 avenue spanning from District 10 to District 11 is in fact packed with such credit facilities; as Dung says, “whenever you go out to the street, you will encounter a bank.” A Tuoi Tre reporter did the counting for her, and the result is stunning: the 5-km street is home to 34 bank branches and transaction offices. Other streets packed with banks include Phan Xich Long in Phu Nhuan District, Cong Hoa in Tan Binh District, Khanh Hoi in District 4, and Nguyen Van Linh in District 7. Spanning only 1 km, Phan Xich Long is currently home to 16 transaction offices, while one may pass as many as 22 such facilities when traveling on the 1.5 km route from the Nguyen Van Linh – Nguyen Huu Tho crossroads to the Lawrence S. Ting tower in District 7, home to the luxury Phu My Hung urban area . The street with the highest “bank density” is Khanh Hoi, where 21 transaction offices are situated on a street that spans less than 1 kilometer. Even though these banks raced to set up their transaction offices, their employees do not seem to have much work to do. A Tuoi Tre correspondent visited the transaction office of a Hanoi-based bank on 3 Thang 2 Street during rush hour on October 16, only to see many employees but no customers. Meanwhile, the nearby office of another bank received two customers. A few buildings away, a bodyguard of another transaction office was yawning. Unfazed by huge expenses The CEO of a commercial bank based in the city said it is costly to set up a new branch or transaction office. A 500-square-meter office costs the bank at least VND$150 million in rent and VND270 million in wages for some 30 employees, plus other maintenance costs, he said. The total monthly cost is thus some VND500 million (US$23,585). This is not to mention that a transaction office normally incurs losses during its first 12 to 18 months of operation, the CEO added. Despite these challenges, banks continue to build more and more transaction facilities. They also hesitate to shut the door on facilities that don’t incur gains, as it is not easy to seek permission to set up a new one. Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the State Bank of Vietnam’s HCMC branch, said Agribank is the only credit institution to cut the number of ineffective transaction offices. The bank reduced its subsidiaries to 40 in mid-2012, from 48 pre-2012, and more offices are to be shut down this year. There are currently 2,102 transaction posts in Ho Chi Minh City, according to the city’s SBV branch. This is double the figure of 2008. TUOITRENEWS