Hanoi (VNA) – Foreign investors have poured around 36.4 billion USDinto the Vietnamese stock market by the end of 2019, a rise of 11.6 percentfrom a year earlier, according to the State Securities Commission (SSC).

During the year, they net bought over 7.51 trillion VND (323 million USD) worthof stocks and fund certificates, and more than 13.73 trillion VND (591.5million USD) worth of bonds.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) finished 2019at 960.99 points, up 7.7 percent from the previous year, the highest growthrecorded in the Southeast Asian region.

With 1,622 listed shares and fund certificates on HoSE and the Hanoi StockExchange, the scale of the stock market reached nearly 1,402 trillion VND(60.36 billion USD), picking up 16 percent as compared to the end of 2018.

The stock market capitalisation increased 10.7 percent against 2018 to reachover 4,384 trillion VND (188.73 billion USD). The value was equivalent to 79.2percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018, and 72.6 percentof the GDP in 2019.

Brokerages expect the stock market will lure more foreign capital in 2020.

Foreign trading activities are forecast to increase this year thanks to manysupporting factors, especially exchange-tradedfunds (ETFs), according to Viet Dragon Securities Company(VDSC).

In the past two years, the E1VFVN30 ETF and VNM US ETF were the two maincapital-attracting ETFs of the Vietnam stock market. It is likely that E1VFVN30will continue to attract cash flow from its two key investors, Thailand and theRepublic of Korea, because the interest rates in these two countries are at lowlevels after the two local central banks made rate cuts last year, VDSC said.

The HOSE introduce new indices that contain foreign-ownership-capped shares inNovember last year, including VNDiamond, VNFin Select and VNFin Lead. Accordingto Saigon Securities Company, many large fund management organisations such asSSIAM, VFM and VinaCapital all plan to launch ETFs based on new indexesimplemented by HOSE.

The stock market is forecast to boom in the near future as foreigners are nowable to invest more in their preferred stocks, thus luring foreign capitalinflows into the Vietnamese market.

SSI Fund Management Company (SSIAM) is completing procedures to launch SSIAMVNFin Lead ETF, simulating the movement of financial stocks. VietFundManagement (VFM) is also preparing for the launch of its two new ETFs based onthe VNDiamond index.

Market experts also forecast that foreign capital inflows could improve in 2020thanks to a number of external factors, such as the cooling of US-China tradetensions and the divestment and equitisation process of State-owned enterprisesin 2020./.