Stock market to develop substantively after 2022: deputy finance minister

Vietnam’s stock market will grow substantively towards sustainable development after 2022, said Deputy Finance Minister Nguyen Duc Chi.

“To make this a reality in 2023, we will need to focus on the practical and sustainable development of the stock market as an important capital-raising channel for the national economy,” he told a year-end conference held by the State Securities Commission (SSC) on Tuesday.

In 2022, the Vietnamese stock market remained stable despite numerous difficulties, he said, adding that the strengthening of supervision and inspection has helped detect and strictly handle violations in the market.

"This is what we did well in the past year, contributing to enhancing market confidence and creating a premise for more transparent and sustainable development," said Chi.

The official asked the SSC to focus on reviewing the Law on Securities to make appropriate adjustments, develop a plan to implement the securities market development strategy to 2023, and continue to take measures to ensure market disciplines at a higher level.

The commission needs to improve service quality, focus on the project to install a new stock trading system provided by the Korea Exchange (KRX), and enhance the capacity of its staff as well as those working at the exchanges and the Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD), Chi noted.

He also emphasized the need to strengthen the dissemination of the market information and related policies to help market members gain full and timely access to official information from the SSC and exchanges.

According to SSC Vice Chairman Pham Hong Son, following the 2021 uptrend, the VN-Index, which represents the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), maintained strong gains in the first months of 2022, reaching a historic peak of 1,528.57 points on January 6. However, due to the influence of the economic situation at home and abroad, the major index entered a period of deep correction, hitting its lowest level of 911.9 points on November 15.

On December 23, the VN-Index stood at 1,020.34 points, down 33.25% from the peak set at the beginning of the year, and 31.9% compared to the end of 2021.

In 2022, the Vietnam stock market witnessed a record increase in the number of new securities accounts. In the first 11 months, domestic individual investors opened more than 2.48 million new accounts, about 2.58 times higher than the figure at the end of last year.

The total number of securities accounts in Vietnam now approximates 6.8 million, a rise of 57.7% compared to the end of 2021. It reflects the people’s increasing interest in securities investment, which is becoming an important investment channel besides traditional ones.

Foreign investors, after net selling in the first quarter of 2022, turned net buyers in the last months of the year. Since the beginning of the year, they have net bought VND26.946 trillion ($1.14 billion) of stocks and fund certificates. The return of foreign investors shows that Vietnamese stock valuations are at an attractive level for their medium- and long-term investment strategies.

In 2022, the derivatives market grew strongly and continued to be an attractive investment channel, helping investors diversify investment flows. The average number of VN30 futures contracts now hits 270,871 contracts per session, up 44% from last year’s figure. The volume of open interest (OI) also soared 61% year-on-year to 50,038 contracts.