Vietnam’s Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung has required stock market authorities to accelerate the long-planned merger between the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) and the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) to form the Vietnam Stock Exchange this year, local media reported. 

The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.

The merger has been planned for years, but few details on the progress have been made public so far.

Last July, the Ministry of Finance submitted to the government proposal for merging the two stock exchanges. Under the plan, all shares listed in the market would be moved to the HoSE, while the government bond and derivatives markets are placed in Hanoi. 

The HoSE now is home to the largest companies while the Hanoi bourse houses smaller companies.

Once the merging is completed, the state would maintain its full ownership in the post-merger stock exchange.

Among other solutions to develop stock market, Dung also asked for completition of the drafting of the bill amending the Securities Law as way to increase the transparency of the stock market, greater efficiency in governance and ensuring legal rights of investors. 

Additionally, more measures are needed to ensure that Vietnam’s stock market will be reclassified from frontier market to secondary emerging market, which is expected to take place in 2020.

In 2018, the benchmark VN-Index down 9.3% amid the global uncertainties, but the market scale and liquidity continued to grow strongly, Dung added. 

At market close on January 2, Vn-Index fell 0.79 points or 0.09% to 891.75 points.

Hanoitimes