A START NONETHELESS1. It boasts a total of 4 listed companies, is only open every other weekday, and the trading rules changed twice in its opening week. But let’s not mock Vietnam’s new stock exchange. It’s a landmark that it exists at all. You can argue about the date, but it’s fair to say it has taken at least 6 years for the Securities Trading Centre - located in Ho Chi Minh City - to open its doors to investors.2. It wasn’t an entirely smooth beginning. Day one, July 28 saw only two companies traded, Refrigeration Electrical Engineering (REE) and Cables and Telecommunications Materials (SACOM), with a total first-day turnover of VND70.4 million (just over USD5,000). Two other companies, Haiphong Paper Co and Transforwarding Warehouse, which hadn’t completed their paperwork in time to be listed on the first day of trading, have since listed - making this perhaps the only exchange in history to log a 100% increase in listed companies in its first week.3. And if the figures are unimpressive to foreign eyes, then the governing State Securities Commission’s approach to regulation is equally unfamiliar. Immediately before the first day’s trading, and without warning, it instituted price ceilings on both listed stocks (with the result that 187,600 SACOM shares were bid for but only 100 changed hands). Before the second day, the maximum trading band of 5% was cut to 2%. A quote ran in the local newspaper saying the measure had been taken “to stop speculation” : a rare ambition on a stock exchange.4. There is plenty of scope for scorn. But locally, the exchange has been welcomed. Deputy director of the centre Tran Dac Sinh says he would like to see 20 to 30 companies listed on the market, but perhaps the size is more relevant than the number. The companies that have listed so far are known as reasonably solid enterprises, but for the world to take note, the exchange needs one of the country’s bigger companies to list: a Post and Telecommunication, a Petro Vietnam or a Vietnam Airlines.5. Another challenge faced by the government in getting investors interested in the market is Vietnam’s cash-based economy, due partly to the high level of upper-tier tax common to socialist economies. Buying shares requires investors to register with one of the 6 locally-appointed brokerages and place money in its account before a trade can take place. Local investors worry that this will demonstrate a level of wealth they would rather the government didn’t know about.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..