Violations in transparency and information disclosure are still rampant on the stock market and remain a problem to market members, public companies and auditors. — Photo cafef.vn

HÀ NỘI — Violations in transparency and information disclosure are still rampant on the stock market and remain a problem to market members, public companies and auditors.

The statement was made by Trần Văn Dũng, chairman of the State Securities Commission (SSI), at a talk show held by the business and economics site ndh.vn on Thursday.

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

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

Phan Lê Thành Long, Director of the Australian Institute of Certified Management Accountants, said Việt 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 Việt 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.

Trần Đình Cường, General Director of consultant firm Ernst and Young Việt 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,” Cường 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, Cường said”.

Chairman of Saigon Securities Inc, Nguyễn Duy Hưng, 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,” Hưng said.

To enhance the quality of information disclosure on the market, SSI chairman Dũng 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, Dũng 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, Dũng said.

SSI'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. — VNS