Vietnamese shares remained upbeat on Wednesday morning on the growth of banking and agriculture sectors.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange was up 0.68 per cent to 936.14 points.

The VN-Index had gained a total of nearly 1.20 per cent in the previous three days.

The market got support from banking and agriculture stocks as the two sector indices rose 2 per cent and 3 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

Agrico stocks Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAG) and HAGL Agrico (HNG) soared 3 per cent and 6.9 per cent, respectively.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai chairman Doan Nguyen Duc has bid for 50 million shares to raise his stake in the company by 5.39 per cent to 40.62 per cent.

HAGL shares had dropped a total of 7.21 per cent in the previous three trading days.

The banking industry was lifted by Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID), Techcombank (TCB) and VPBank (VPB).

TCB surged 6.5 per cent to VND22,800 per share on Wednesday.

The private-equity lender on Tuesday officially curbed its foreign ownership cap to 22.5076 per cent of the charter capital from 22.4908 per cent.

TCB was also the most active stock on Wednesday morning with more than 28.5 million shares transferred.

The large-cap and mid-cap trackers on HoSE gained 0.85 per cent and 0.05 per cent on Wednesday morning while the small-cap index slid 0.11 per cent.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index struggled to advance 0.95 per cent to 137.44 points.

The northern market index edged up 0.18 per cent on Tuesday.

More than 314 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth nearly VND10.7 trillion (US$461.7 million).

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS