Vietnam's VP Bank says 2007 net profit doubles

HANOI, April 9 (Reuters) - Vietnam's VP Bank, 10 percent owned by Singapore's OCBC Bank (OCBC.SI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said on Wednesday that it doubled its net profit in 2007 to 226.7 billion dong ($14.2 million) from the previous year.

Total assets jumped 79.4 percent to 18.14 trillion dong last year, the Hanoi-based VP Bank, the 12th largest partly private bank in Vietnam, said in its annual report for 2007.

VP Bank has said it would sell a further 5 percent stake to OCBC, Singapore's third-largest lender, but no date has been announced.

OCBC said in January it planned to open a fully-owned banking unit in communist-run Vietnam, where booming growth and a freeing up of the economy is fuelling demand for financial services.

In January, the unlisted VP Bank, or Vietnam Bank for Private Enterprises, said it raised nearly 15.5 trillion dong of deposits at the end of 2007, up 125 percent from 2006, and loans also reached more than 13 trillion dong.

Vietnam's credit growth was 54 percent last year, prompting the central bank to tighten money supply in the first quarter of 2008 as inflation in March hit 19.3 percent from a year earlier, the highest in more than 12 years. ($1=15,961 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh, editing by Jacqueline Wong)

(ho.minh@reuters.com; +844 825 9623; Reuters Messaging: ho.minh.reuters.com@reuters.net))