Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung is chairing a conference in Seoul from 16-19 to promote indirect investments from the Republic of Korea (RoK) to Viet Nam, according to the State Securities Commission (SSC).

At the investment promotion conference, Vietnamese officials will publicise the country’s policies on economic restructuring, equitisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and measures to encourage foreign indirect investment into the stock market.

The conference also creates a venue for Vietnamese management agencies to meet and encourage RoK financial investors, bankers and insurers to conduct business in Viet Nam, as well as to hear assessments and recommendations from Korean investors regarding Viet Nam’s financial and insurance markets.

According to SSC Chairman Tran Van Dung, RoK is currently the largest foreign investor in Viet Nam, and its increasing presence in Viet Nam’s stock market is helping attract indirect Korean investment in the country.

He added that, last year, Viet Nam’s stock market continued to be a magnet for foreign indirect investment, which totaled US$32.9 billion, up by 90 percent from the previous year. Foreign indirect investment continued entering the country in the first three months of 2018, rising by 14 percent from the end of 2017 to $37.6 billion in late March.

Korean indirect investment is rising sharply, though it has yet to match its potential, Dung said, noting that 4,846 Korean investors are present in Viet Nam’s stock market.

There are currently five South Korea-invested securities companies in the Vietnamese stock market, namely Korea Investment & Securities, Mirae Asset Daewoo, Shinhan Investment, KB Securities and Woori, Dung said, adding that these securities firms, together with banks and representative offices of fund investment companies from RoK, are playing an important role in boosting the inflow of Korean indirect investment into Viet Nam.

The Northeast Asian nation is also operating projects in securities with Viet Nam, Dung said, adding that the Ha Noi Stock Exchange and the HCM Stock Exchange are working to update their technological systems, with the help of the Korea Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, the SSC and the Korea Financial Investment Association are also discussing their working together on financial technology, he added.

According to Dung, to further attract foreign indirect investment from RoK, the SSC will strengthen cooperation with RoK’s managerial agencies to learn about Korean investors’ investment demands, and then both sides will work to remove obstacles to Korean investment in Viet Nam’s stock market.

SSC will also strive to attract indirect foreign investment into Viet Nam through building a stable, safe, fair, open and effective stock market, to protect the interests of investors and respect market rules, gradually integrating with other stock markets in the region and throughout the world.

In addition, it will further accelerate the listing of large-scale equitised SOEs and reduce State ownership to bolster attractiveness, besides diversifying products on the stock market to ensure that foreign investors have more investment opportunities.

According to experts, Viet Nam’s stock markets are attractive to foreign investors, including South Koreans, especially when 64 SOEs will become equitised, while 181 others will be divested between now and 2020. — VNS