The Ministry of Finance aims to issue 200 trillion VND (8.78 billion USD) worth of Government bonds and develop green Government bonds in 2019.

The goals were set by the finance ministry during a meeting last week held by the Hanoi Stock Exchange on the status of the Vietnamese bond market in the final quarter of 2018.

According to the ministry, the infrastructure of the secondary bond market is set to be improved to raise the quality of bond trading. Other goals include the publication of issuance dates by quarter for the whole year and the improvement in quality of bond market developers.

In 2019, the State Treasury will focus on fixed rate bonds and long/short coupon bonds and will consider re-issuing the bonds, which had been issued and matured in previous years, to raise the number of bond codes and to reduce the amount of small-valued bonds. It will also buy back Government bonds with maturity of less than three months.

The Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) will aim to develop a trading platform to buyback and convert bonds, and offer supportive tools for market developers.

According to the HNX, as of November 30, total value of Government bonds raised on the northern trading bourse hit 147 trillion VND (6.45 billion USD), down 24.3 percent year on year. The figure was equal to half of the full-year target.

Of the figure, the State Treasury raised 137.3 trillion VND worth of G-bonds, down 19 percent year on year and fulfilling 78.4 percent of its full-year target. Insurance companies topped the market by market share as their purchases accounted for 66.4 percent of the market’s total.

The total value of the secondary bond market was nearly 1.1 quadrillion VND (48.3 billion USD), up 8.2 percent year on year and equal to 20 percent of last year’s gross domestic product.

Daily average trading value reached 8.78 trillion VND in the past 11 months, down 3.3 percent year on year. The value of repurchase agreement transactions accounted for 53.7 percent of the market’s total, up 4.5 percent year on year.-VNA