Australia's ANZ to add four outlets in Vietnam

HANOI, July 2 (Reuters) - Australia's third-biggest lender, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ.AX), plans to open up four new outlets in Vietnam by the end of 2008 to expand financial services there, the bank said on Wednesday.

The bank also said it had received a licence from the country's central bank to incorporate locally, effectively allowing it to compete equally with local banks -- six state-run and 37 partly private ones [See TABLE ID:nHAN200690]. It will be able to offer the same services as domestic lenders.

"ANZ regards expansion in Vietnam as one of its highest priorities in Asia," Alex Thursby, the group's Asia Pacific managing director, said in a statement released during a visit by Australian Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Stephen Smith.

In March, HSBC (HSBA.L) was also granted a licence to incorporate in Vietnam, last year touted as Asia's next tiger economy but since strained by annual inflation in double digits for eight consecutive months and a tripling of its trade deficit.

ANZ, which has a 10 percent stake in Vietnam's Sacombank STM.HM, said the licence would help it to offer more diverse financial products including mortgage loans, credit cards, car loans and investments to Vietnamese clients.

Ten percent of Vietnam's 85 million people have bank accounts in a country with about 4,000 bank branches, half of them run by Agribank, Vietnam's largest enterprise.

The State Bank of Vietnam, the central bank, has raised interest rates three times so far this year as part of its anti-inflation policies after credit growth of 54 percent last year contributed to overheating of the emerging market economy. (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Editing by Grant McCool and Clarence Fernandez)