While the US Department of Treasury alleged that Vietnam was a “currency manipulator” in December last year, artificially devaluing the dong to boost exports, the nation is on course to grow by 6.5 percent this year.

This was the view of professionals from Vinacapital, which runs listed trust Vietnam Opportunities Fund. The country went against the global grain last year by growing its GDP by around 2 percent, despite one of its biggest industries, tourism, being brought to its knees.

Michael Kokalari, chief economist at Vinacapital, said there was enormous demand for what people deem ‘stay at home goods’ such as televisions, furniture and “everything that you need to spend more time to work at home”.

“What happened in Vietnam is there was a movement in the trade surplus from about 4 percent of GDP, to about 7 percent last year. This was kind of supporting the economy,” said Mr Kokalari.

Ismael Pili, head of research at Vinacapital, was equally optimistic about the country’s stock market. He said that broadly that Vietnam companies trade at a discount to other ASEAN nations and foreign investor positioning in the country is fairly low, having made large exits last year.

He added that if Vietnam is put into the MSCI Emerging Market category, investors really want to be present in the market for a year to 18 months before the upgrade to really enjoy the benefits.

It’s not all good news though. “A lot of the issues that people are concerned about from geopolitical tensions, or even leadership transitions are probably not factors that we're too concerned about,” said Mr Pili, highlighting that a further outbreak of Covid is far more concerning to these fund professionals.