VietNamNet Bridge - All the favorable conditions for the stock market to prosper can be seen at this moment: open policies, the strong recovery of the national economy, interest of international investors in Vietnamese stocks, and strong capital flow to frontier markets.

Never before has the Ministry of Finance (MOF) paid so much attention to the stock market as it is doing now. Chair of the State Securities Commission (SSC) Vu Bang said the ministry has meetings every day with the commission to discuss issues relating to the legal framework, especially after Decree No 60 on lifting the ceiling for foreign ownership ratio was promulgated.

The Prime Minister’s Decision No 55 dated in 2009 stipulated that foreign investors must not hold more than 49 percent of the chartered capital in one Vietnamese listed enterprise.

Bang said the Vietnamese officials’ meetings with the US investors in early July brought outcomes better than expected by the government and ministries. Therefore, MOF decided that the legal documents guiding the implementation of Decree No 60 must be promulgated in July as committed by Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung.

“We wish to see listed and public companies prepare well for the lifting of the foreign equity cap right now, so that the new regulation can come into reality from early September,” Bang said.

SSC and MOF last week even discussed a solution of offering companies which can meet requirements and operate in unconditional business fields to have a high foreign ownership ratio of up to 100 percent, with no need to wait for guiding documents.

Businesses which want to have less than 100 percent of foreign ownership ratio would be allowed to adjust the ratio in accordance with the shareholders’ council meeting and the businesses’ chapters.

The suggested solution, if applied, would help ease the procedures that businesses and investors have to follow, and therefore, it has been advocated by the market’s members.

However, Bang has said that MOF will still have to discuss further with MPI on the solution, because under the Enterprise Law, businesses have to hold shareholders’ meetings if they want to amend businesses’ chapters.

The SSC’s plan on the T+2 payment method has received strong support from all market members.

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese stock market has become a ‘hot spot’ catching the special attention of the world’s investors. CNBC, Bloomberg and financial websites have published articles about Vietnam’s recent macroeconomic improvements. 

The 17 percent growth rate of the VN Index this year, in the eyes of foreign analysts, shows that the stock market has bounced back after seven years of decline.

TBKTSG