UPDATE 1-Vietnam stock market suspends trading for third day
(Updates with details, quotes)
HANOI, May 28 (Reuters) - Trading on Vietnam's stock exchange .VNI will remain suspended for a third consecutive day on Thursday following a computer system problem, officials said on Wednesday.
Trading has been halted since Tuesday, but the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and the State Securities Commission said it would resume on Friday if testing showed the system was stable.
The nearly 8-year-old market jumped 23 percent last year amid investor excitement about Vietnam's economic potential but has slumped 55 percent so far this year, making it the worst performing market in Asia.
The exchange has occasionally been hit in the past by technological problems.
"After the error is solved, the exchange will test the system connection with securities companies," the exchange said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the smaller over-the-counter Hanoi Securities Trading Centre .HASTCI has operated normally. It fell 1.5 percent on Wednesday to 121.3 points.
The combined market capitalisation of the two exchanges is about $15 billion.
On Monday, the main market closed down 1.76 percent at 420.5 points, marking three weeks of steady declines within a trading band of +/- 2 percent, which was imposed by the state regulator to stabilise the market.
Earlier this month, market liquidity hit its lowest level in two years, an unintended victim of the government's battle to try and reduce double-digit inflation and a liquidity crunch at banks.
The government estimated on Tuesday that annual inflation accelerated to 25.2 percent in May from 21.4 percent in April, one of the highest rates in Asia [ID:nHAN288370]. (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Anshuman Daga)
