Van Eck bets on Vietnam's growth with new ETF

NEW YORK Aug 13 (Reuters) - Money manager Van Eck Global will launch on Friday an exchange-traded fund dedicated solely to Vietnam's stocks in a sign of increased investor appetite for smaller but fast-growing emerging-market countries.

The Market Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM) will be the first U.S.-listed ETF exclusively dedicated to Vietnam, mirroring the performance of the Market Vectors Vietnam index .MVVN, which tracks companies that generate at least 50 percent of their revenues in the country, Van Eck said in a statement.

Financials, energy and materials are the top three industry weightings in the benchmark index, which has soared over 90 percent since the beginning of March.

"Vietnam is one of the world's most populous nations, and its well-educated, young population -- nearly half of the country's 90 million residents are under the age of 25 -- provides strong underpinnings for local economic growth," Van Eck said in the statement.

"As the global marketplace continues to show signs of life, Asian economies, and Vietnam in particular, appear poised to exit the recent downturn with solid fundamentals and strong growth prospects relative to their developed market counterparts," the firm added.

The Vietnamese economy grew an estimated 3.9 percent in the first six months of 2009 from a year earlier, slowing from an annual growth of 6.5 percent in the same period of 2008, government data showed. It is expected to expand around 5 percent this year, according to official estimates.

Indications that developing countries will exit the global economic crisis faster than rich economies have already encouraged fund managers to launch a dozen exchange-traded funds dedicated to emerging markets in the first half of the year. For details, see [ID:nN03526045]. (Reporting by Walter Brandimarte; Editing by Kenneth Barry)