The long-awaited upgrade of Viet Nam’s equity markets from frontier to emerging-market status has kicked off with a phased entry of Vietnamese companies into global benchmark indices, raising the prospect of billions of dollars in new investment.
A group of 27 Vietnamese blue-chip stocks joined the FTSE Global All Cap index on September 21, 2026, starting with 10 percent as proportion of investability weight. Three similar tranches will take effect over the following year so that, by September 2027, Viet Nam is expected to be fully included in global emerging-market indices.
The upgrade will cap a remarkable transformation for Viet Nam’s capital markets, assisted by the World Bank Group’s Joint Capital Markets Program through its advisory partnership with the State Securities Commission (SSC).
“We say, let’s support private sector investment. That means support for capital markets,” said Vu Chi Dzung, SSC’s Director General of International Cooperation in an interview early this year. “The World Bank and J-CAP helped SSC in terms of understanding the opinions and demand from foreign investors.”
Viet Nam’s strong commitment to capture new investment has distinguished it from some other emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Globally, investment in EMDEs has slowed since the 2008-09 financial crisis to about half the rate in the first decade of this century, according to research published in 2025 by World Bank economists Indermit Gill and M. Ayhan Kose.
With the goal of boosting private investment through deep and transparent capital markets, J-CAP works with regulators, policy makers, investors, and financial institutions in 21 countries. Since 2018 one of those countries has been Viet Nam, where J-CAP has offered advisory that is often highly technical and geared toward capital formation for jobs, infrastructure, and a wide range of other development priorities.
“J-CAP as a bridge was essential” to bringing Viet Nam’s reforms to fruition, said Lyndon Chao, of the Asian Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association, a Hong Kong-based regional trade association.
One question now is the extent to which Viet Nam’s experience can be replicated in other Asian economies, he said. Countries with some of the same market barriers as Viet Nam will be watching its investment flows in the coming years to gauge the effects of its market reforms and to see their own potential to capture finite investment dollars.
“There is competition for capital, absolutely,” said Chao. “There is an understanding that you can’t grow the economy without full support of the capital markets. Every market is competing to receive some of that capital.”
The London-based FTSE Russell announced Viet Nam’s upgrade from “frontier” to “secondary emerging market” status in October 2025, citing the increased momentum of its capital market reforms. The upgrade triggered a “rebalancing” of FTSE’s Global Equity Index Series, clearing the way for a range of Vietnamese stocks to be included in the index, although large-cap stocks are expected to dominate the equity profile in early stages.
World Bank estimates suggest the upgrade could generate up to US$5 billion in portfolio flows in the first few years.
read more: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2026/10/09/viet-nam-equity-upgrade-takes-off
