Upgrading can no longer be delayed, Deputy Minister of Finance Nguyen Duc Chi declared, highlighting the urgency of meeting international standards to elevate Vietnam’s market classification.

Domestic individual investors hold more than 7.98 million accounts for securities trading as of the end of June, or 8% of Vietnam’s population, according to statistics supplied by the Vietnam Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation.

More than 163,000 new stock trader accounts were created during March this year, an increase of over 50,000 accounts compared to January, marking March the month with the most accounts created in the last six months, according to the Vietnam Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation (VSDC).

After more than two months of operation of the trading platform for privately placed corporate bonds, another 56 corporate bond codes were registered to be traded on the system last month, with the transaction value doubling that of August, said the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX).