Depressed investor sentiment, hit by tightened credit and negative macroeconomic news, has sent the stock market plunging toward the bottom, experts say.

“The stock market is now in the bottom region though it hasn’t quite hit the bottom yet,” Pham Linh, general director of VISecurities, said at a seminar in Ho Chi Minh City on March 26. “The market may continue to fall if [more] bad news comes from the economy or listed companies.”

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange has lost 9.5 percent in the past year. Of 661 firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi bourses, around 160 are being traded below their par value (VND10,000).

Experts blame the market’s poor performance on the government’s tight monetary policies, high inflation, and slow economic growth.

Nguyen Xuan Thanh of the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program said stock indices and credit growth typically follow the same trend, so when the latter target was slashed in late February, the stock market reacted immediately.

The government aims to keep credit growth at less than 20 percent this year, revised downwards from the initial target of 23 percent.

Thanh said, however, slower credit growth was necessary in the current context of the need to contain inflation and stabilize the economy.

Prices jumped 13.89 percent year-on-year in March, fueled by increases in petrol and power prices as well as higher import costs caused by dong devaluations, the General Statistics Office said March 24. That was the fastest pace seen since February 2009.

Fuel prices

Vietnam raised prices of petroleum products from 10 p.m. on Tuesday (March 29) to keep domestic prices in line with international prices, the Ministry of Finance said. The price of 92-RON gasoline was raised 10 percent to VND21,300 per liter, diesel increased 15 percent to VND21,100 per liter and kerosene gained 14 percent to VND20,800 per liter, the ministry said.

“The consecutive hike in petroleum prices in a short time like this will further raise concern among investors that inflation, which is already at a very high level, will keep accelerating,” Le Ba Hoang Quang, Hanoi-based director of Sacombank Securities said by phone Wednesday.

“We were hoping to start seeing a month-on-month slowdown in CPI numbers and it seems it’s still going to be affected by another increase in petroleum products,” Marc Djandji, head of research at Viet Capital Securities in Ho Chi Minh City, said. “It’s rather obvious that the stock market should react negatively.”

Economic growth

Giang Trung Kien, head of research at FPT Securities Joint-Stock Co., said the recent market decline can be attributed to slow economic growth.

The GDP climbed 5.4 percent in three months through March from a year earlier, compared with 7.34 percent in the fourth quarter.

“Although the figures were expected, the news still affected investor sentiment,” said Kien. “Prospects for the economy still look gloomy and investors are worried about reduced cash flows into the market in the context of slow economic growth and high inflation.”

Apart from local news, the unrest in Libya, Japan’s twin disasters as well as the nuclear crisis have also made stock market players pessimistic, said Pham Linh of VISecurities, adding that foreign investors dumped a large number of shares in the first weeks of March.