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Stock market: Dawn has not broken yet
Today, February 2, 2009, the stock market will open again after the long lunar new year holiday. However, investors have been told that no optimistic signs for the market will be seen in the first months of the year.
Experts have seen ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ for the real estate market, while they have not seen any positive signs for the stock market.
The government has approved an interest rate subsidy of 4% for short-term VND loans; however, loans for securities investments are ineligible.
The real estate market is believed will heat up in the time to come as a huge volume of capital is going to be pumped into the market.
Since the State Bank of Vietnam approved the negotiation-based interest rate scheme, some commercial banks have announced credit packages worth several hundred and even thousand billion VND to fund houses and land for accommodations.
Meanwhile, securities seems to be the field for which commercial banks will limit funding until the end of 2009 at the earliest.
Analysts believe that in 2009, the cash flow to the stock market (foreign investment, credit) will be limited.
Where will cash flow to?
When asked if there were many investors who had come to withdraw money from their accounts, the accountant of a securities company said: “No money is left in the accounts for them to withdraw”. There are not many investors who still keep money in their accounts to make further investments.
Though bank interest rates have become less attractive since the State Bank of Vietnam slashed the basic interest rate to 7% per annum, the stock market is still not likely to attract investors’ capital due to its poor performance.
When will the stock market’s golden age return?
Le Xuan Nghia, Deputy Chairman of the National Finance Supervision Committee, believes that the stock market will keep sluggish in the time to come and will recover slowly in the second half of 2009.
The stock market is the thermometer which shows the temperature of the national economy. Therefore, only when the national economy shows signs of recovery and development, will the stock market be able to bounce back.
The question has been raised about when the national economy will recover. Optimists believe that the economy will recover soon, while others think that the time for recovery will come in 2011 or later.
Trinh Ngoc Lan
vietnamnet
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