Small and limited 20 years ago, the Vietnamese capital market has grown to provide a wide range of products. With favorable prospects, Vietnam must address fundamental challenges to continue evolving and achieve its potential.
Compared with other capital markets around the world, Vietnam’s capital market has a relatively short history of only 20 years. In that time, however, the Vietnamese capital market has transformed—from a small market with limited products and capitalization at 1% of GDP in 2000 into a market with a wide range of stock, bond, and derivative products worth 104% of GDP in June 2020.
The market is attracting more participants locally as well as internationally, drawing a large amount of capital into Vietnam’s economy and contributing significantly to the nation’s growth. If Vietnam can adequately address its challenges—such as institutions, high-quality human resources, financial infrastructure, IT, transparency, and financial product range—its capital market will have many opportunities to grow because of its relatively small size (compared with other Asia-Pacific economies) and the country’s great economic prospects.
This article is from "The Emerging Asia Pacific Capital Markets: Challenges and Opportunities," published by CFA Institute Research Foundation.