HANOI/LONDON (Reuters) – Vietnam’s finance minister said on Tuesday he was “pretty confident” a long-coveted upgrade of its stock market to emerging market status by global index provider FTSE Russell would be confirmed next month.
Vietnam has been seeking the upgrade to “secondary emerging market” from “frontier market” status since 2018, a move analysts estimate would drive an extra $5-7 billion of international cash into the country’s $350 billion stock market.
“I myself am pretty confident of the upgrade possibility,” Nguyen Van Thang said in response to a Reuters question at a conference in London, where he had also met FTSE Russell and London Stock Exchange officials.
“Basically and fundamentally we have satisfied the criteria of the index providers.”
Analysts expect FTSE Russell to formally announce Vietnam’s upgrade as part of an annual global review due next month. It has had the Southeast Asian country on its watchlist for such a move since 2018.
Vietnam’s stock market has around 1,600 listed companies, is currently worth over $320 billion in market capitalisation – equivalent to almost 74% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product – and averages around $1.5 billion of trading a day.
It is also up more than 30% so far this year, despite a 20% tumble in April when U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweep of now-implemented global trade tariffs initially threatened a 46% levy on U.S. imports of Vietnamese goods.
That rate has since been set at a more modest 20%, albeit still 40% for so-called “transshipments” from countries such as China.
If FTSE Russell does upgrade the stock market status it is then expected to up its weighting in its secondary emerging market index in a number of stages to make its absorption easier.
(Reporting by Khanh Vu in Hanoi and Marc Jones in London; Editing by John Mair and Alex Richardson)
