Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung will chair an investment promotion conference slated for April 16-19 in Seoul, the Republic of Korea (RoK), according to the State Securities Commission.

Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung 

The conference aims to boost the investment flow from the RoK into Vietnam through publicizing Vietnam’s policies on economic restructuring, equitisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and measures to encourage indirect foreign investment into the stock market.

It also creates a venue for Vietnamese management agencies to meet and persuade RoK financial investors, bankers and insurers to do business in Vietnam, as well as to hear assessment and recommendations from Korean investors regarding Vietnam’s financial and insurance markets.

Since 2014, the Finance Ministry has been organising investment promotion conference and business meetings in major foreign markets such as the US and Japan. 

Last year, the RoK has become the largest trade partner of Vietnam with two-way trade at nearly 61.56 billion USD. The East Asian economic power was also the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam with accumulated investment capital reaching 57.66 billion USD as of December 2017, or 18.1 percent of total FDI in Vietnam. 

RoK investors have shown increasing interest in the Vietnamese market. According to Chairman of the State Securities Commission of Vietnam (SSCV) Tran Van Dung, 4,846 RoK investors are present in Vietnam’s stock market.

There are five RoK-invested securities companies in the market at present, namely Korea Investment & Securities, Mirae Asset Daewoo, Shinhan Investment, KB Securities and Woori.

However, the investment has yet to match potential, Dung said. 

As of late March, Vietnam’s stock market attracted 37.6 billion USD in foreign indirect investment.-VNA