Violations of transparency still plaguing local securities market

The statement was made by Tran Van Dung, chairman of the State Securities Commission (SSC), at a talk show held by the business and economics site ndh.vn yesterday.

In 2018, SSC issued nearly 400 sanction decisions, more than half were related to information disclosure, Dung revealed.

In addition, regarding the quality of corporate governance, Viet Nam is currently the lowest ranked nation in the ASEAN 6, after Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, Dung said.

Phan Le Thanh Long, Director of the Australian Institute of Certified Management Accountants, said Viet Nam is among the 12 countries in the world that do not follow international financial reporting standards,

This, Long said, made the listed companies face difficulties in the publication of financial statements.

In the US every year, the Securities and Exchange Commission required some 300 cases to re-present their financial statements, while in Viet Nam, there is no such system, Long said.

It is also rare that management agencies empower other bodies or individuals to monitor and supervise the market and the quality of information disclosure, he said.

Tran Dinh Cuong, General Director of consultant firm Ernst and Young Viet Nam, attributed the high rate of non-compliance to the low self-consciousness of Vietnamese enterprises.

“They prepare reports if they have to, not for their self-awareness and responsibility,” Cuong said.

“A company is obliged to present and explain the use of the capital it received from the shareholders and how the capital has been ultilised,” Cuong said.

Chairman of Saigon Securities Inc, Nguyen Duy Hung, said the key and decisive element for this problem is the whole “machine” and not just the “model”.

“Machine here means the human factor, if the machine runs good, everything will be transparent. But if the machine does not run smoothly, no model can help,” Hung said.

To enhance the quality of information disclosure on the market, SSC chairman Dung said there needed to be concerted efforts from many parties, including auditing companies, organisations like the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the listed companies themselves, Dung said.

Businesses must be more self-aware to improve their transparency and become more resilience to crisis.

The management agency needed to improve the legal framework and promote market inspection and supervision, Dung said.

SSC’s statistics showed that in 2018, there were 397 violations of 129 organisations and 268 individuals.

Nine individuals were sanctioned for the acts of manipulating stock prices, creating fake supply and demand.