Difficult now, but mid-term, long-term outlook positive for Vietnam stock market: experts

Vietnam’s stock market has witnessed a prolonged downtrend, but experts said the market would go through some corrections to improve mid and long-term prospects.

MoMo, Vietnam’s leading e-wallet platform, has seen positive signs over the past three months, CEO Nguyen Manh Tuong said Thursday at the Nhip Cau Dau Tu magazine’s Investment Conference 2022.

“We’ve welcomed many foreign investors to our company to get an understanding of the Vietnamese stock market and fintech sector. I was quite surprised but have found an answer for me.

“Several investment funds are looking at Southeast Asia, with a focus on Vietnam and Indonesia,” he said. “Therefore, I believe Vietnamese listed companies have opportunities to grab capital inflows as long as they have strong business foundations.”

Dominic Scriven, chairman of Dragon Capital, a leading Vietnam-focused investment fund, said he has seen a difficult period in the stock market but the mid-and long-term outlook was positive. Vietnam is a frontier market, so stock prices are generally cheaper than those in emerging markets, and long-term investors keep an eye on Vietnam, he said.

Vietnam’s economic resilience is another reason investors are likely to play down short-term woes in order not to miss opportunities in the long run, Scriven told the conference.

Murli Maiya, an investment banker who has been with JPMorgan for 28 years, also expressed optimism about Vietnam’s stock market. “I’ve seen a supportive macroeconomic backdrop despite ongoing market volatility in the stock market,” the veteran said.

Other speakers at the event shared Maiya’s view. David Dapice, Professor Emeritus at the U.S.’s Harvard Kennedy School, said “Vietnam is a huge success story.”

“The World Trade Organization, ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, EU-Vietnam FTA, and other bilateral trade pacts have been opening up huge potential markets to Vietnam,” the professor said, adding he has kept a close eye on the country for many years since the early 1990s.

Huge FDI inflows into the nation are accounting for 75% of its exports and employ millions of workers from low-productivity sectors to high-tech ones. The Doi moi reforms, which started in 1986, have created historical changes in Vietnam’s socio-economic development, leading to the enterprise law later to make it much easier to start and run private firms, Dapice said

“There is still room for improvement now,” he noted, adding that the current private sector ratios of the GDP were 11%, 33% and 60% in Vietnam, Thailand and China, respectively.

Like Dapice, Tran Hung Huy, chairman of Ho Chi Minh City-based Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), said he was bullish about the long run but “cautiously optimistic” as being prudent was part of ACB’s nature.

He said despite Vietnam’s economic resilience, it was still too early to predict some economic developments in 2023 because of complicated events worldwide. However, he expected that the State Bank of Vietnam, or SBV, would raise its 2022 credit growth cap of 14% within this month amid a credit crunch in the country.

SBV had said that its cap on the banking system's credit expansion for this year would remain unchanged at 14%, but urged banks to boost lending for production. In a dispatch dated November 22, the central bank called on credit institutions and banks, both local and foreign, to balance their capital sources and increase lending to enterprises and individuals towards boosting economic growth.

Dragon Capital chairman Scriven said he believed 2024 would be a better year for the Vietnamese economy than 2023, which would continue to see a global recession.