Vietnam's stock market, VN-Index, rose nearly 100 points within one week from 974.76 on Jan. 26 to 1, 074.55 on Feb. 2, reaching to the highest level since the establishment of the local bourse in July 2000 with the starting index of 100.

"I think the index will surpass the threshold of 1,100 points before Tet (traditional New Year starting on Feb. 17). Many investors, both Vietnamese and foreign, are pouring more and more money into the stock market," a young man named Nguyen Van Dung, staff of the State Bank of Vietnam in Hanoi capital, told Xinhua on Monday.

Many local investors invest in the market with the hope of getting rich quickly by buying shares and then selling them at higher prices in a short period of time, he said, adding that other reasons for the boiling bourse include good performances of listed companies, many of them have recently decided to pay last year's dividend of around 20 percent either in cash or share, and big stock purchase of foreign investors.

Fueled by quick profit gains, many employees of state agencies and enterprises in big cities are going out of their office in the working hours to place stock trading orders. The bank has just issued a regulation on banning its staff from abusing working time for stock investment, Dung said.

Vietnam's State Securities Commission predicted that total values of listed shares will represent nearly 30 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007, and increase to 30- 40 billion U.S. dollars, or 30-40 percent of the GDP, in 2010.

By 2010, the number of stock investors is expected to treble or quadruple that now, reaching 250,000-300,000, the commission said. By the year, foreign investors will be likely to account for 5 percent of the total number of stock investors in the country.

Vietnam currently has 107 kinds of listed shares, 367 kinds of listed bonds, mostly government bonds, and 2 listed investment funds totaling over 71,953 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 4.5 billion dollars).

Source: Xinhua