Nearly 90% of SMEs have not recorded outstanding loans
FiinGroup's report SMEs in Vietnam: Business Maturity & Access to Credit August 2026 shows that the credit gap for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam is still very large.
According to FiinGroup, Vietnam currently has about 914,000 SMEs, equivalent to about 94% of the total number of businesses nationwide according to this organization's classification. However, the SME group only contributes less than 20% of total revenue and about 8% of total import and export turnover.
Notably, only about 8.8% of small and medium-sized enterprises have access to loans, down 0.5 percentage points compared to 2025. Meanwhile, the corresponding rate in the large enterprise group is up to 47.1%. FiinGroup assesses that this gap is limiting the ability of SMEs to maintain operations and expand scale.
Another slice in the report shows that nearly 90% of SMEs in the analysis sample did not record outstanding loans. In the opposite direction, banks and financial institutions tend to choose businesses that have been operating for many years, when nearly 85% of SMEs are borrowing capital with an operating period of 5 years or more.
According to FiinGroup, there are still about 45% of businesses that have been operating for over 5 years, belonging to the medium to low risk group but have not accessed loans. This is considered a potential segment for credit institutions to continue to assess.
67,000 small and medium-sized enterprises emerge in the group that has not borrowed capital
Going deeper into the group of businesses operating for over 5 years but not yet accessing credit, FiinGroup recorded about 222,000 businesses.
Looking at the scale, businesses that have not borrowed capital have total assets and median revenue lower than the group with outstanding debts. The proportion of businesses generating positive cash flow from business operations is also lower, at 47.8%, compared to 56.4% of the borrowing group.
But the group that has not borrowed recorded some more positive financial indicators. Average revenue growth reached 15.6%, higher than the 9.8% of the borrowing group. FiinGroup also recorded a better net profit margin, return on assets and liquidity of this group.
Among them, there are about 67,000 businesses that both generate positive cash flow from business operations and record revenue growth.
FiinGroup believes that this is a group that should be prioritized to access to assess capital needs and financial supply capacity. The report also noted that some businesses may be self-financing with their own capital or may not actually have a large loan demand. Therefore, the figure of 67,000 businesses does not mean that all can immediately become borrowers of banks.
Credit gaps are also clearly shown in the commercial sector - a group with a large number of SMEs. FiinGroup said that less than 10% of SMEs in this sector are accessing loans. Among the approximately 249,000 commercial enterprises that have not borrowed capital, 59,000 enterprises are classified as low-risk and 97,000 enterprises are classified as medium-risk.
However, only 23.4% of commercial enterprises generate positive cash flow from business operations. FiinGroup believes that the room for credit expansion is still significant, but banks need to carefully screen the quality of cash flow and risk level instead of just relying on the enterprise not having outstanding loans.
