Agents put trading orders on the computer at An Binh Securities Company (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) - Shares advanced on May 22 on strongsupport from the banking sector, following a new National Assembly resolutionto resolve bad debt.
The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange edged up 1.40 percent to closeat 744.10 points.
On the smaller Hanoi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index increased 0.58 percent toend at 92.71 points.
Bank stocks were the biggest gainer on May 22, as eight of nine listed lendersadvanced and one remained unchanged. The sector index recorded an average dailygrowth of 3.64 percent, vietstock.vn data showed.
BIDV (BID) hit the maximum rise of 7 percent capped for a single trade on theHCM City’s bourse.
Other big banks including Vietcombank (VCB), Vietinbank (CTG) and Military Bank(MBB) increased 2-5 percent.
Two banks on the northern Hanoi’s exchange, Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) and Saigon-HanoiBank (SHB), leapt 1.6 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.
The entire banking system settled over 610 trillion VND (roughly 27 billion USD)worth of non-performing loans (NPLs) in the 2012-16 period. Of the total, over56 percent were recovered by credit institutions, and the remaining were soldto the Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC), a Government report released atthe National Assembly’s meeting on Monday showed.
According to the report, the ratio of bad debts on balance sheet and unsolvedbad debts sold to VAMC accounted for 5.8 per cent of total outstanding debtsand investment of the banking system in the economy. This ratio would be over10 percent with hidden debts included.
The Government has submitted a new resolution on NPLs to the National Assemblyfor approval, including having domestic and foreign investors involving in thisprocess. This resolution is expected to help remove bottlenecks in solving baddebts.
“Stock market movement today reflected high investor expectations about thisissue, as bank stocks surged and led the market,” Tran Hai Yen, a stock analystat Bao Viet Securities Co, wrote on a May 22 report.
If approved by the National Assembly in this meeting session, the bad debtsettlement resolution would be enacted shortly and helped speed up the bad debtsolving process, Yen said.
The market was bustling on May 22, with a total of nearly 6.9 trillion VND (304million USD) flowing in the two exchanges while nearly 366 million shares werechanged hands, over two-fold increases over the daily average volume and valueseen last week.
Foreign investors lifted their trades with a combined net buy value of nearly 480billion VND in the two markets following the information US-based MSCI FrontierMarkets 100 Index raised the proportion of Vietnamese shares in the basket from8.01 percent to 12.63 percent. It is expected this exchange-traded fund willpour about 27.8 million USD in the Vietnamese market in the coming months.-VNA
