Information transparency in the AEC era

Abstract

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was officially established by the end of 2015. Vietnam needs to change not only the legal framework but also information systems – especially financial information – to be more transparent as required by the AEC. This study is to find factors affecting financial information transparency of Vietnam’s companies in fulfilling commitments made by Vietnam to AEC. Employing linear regression model (SPSS), we analyzed data of financial information of 240 listed companies on HOSE. Results indicated that out of independent variables, including fixed assets, firm size, total asset turnover, profit and debts, only firm size is correlated with the transparency in disclosing information of HOSE-listed companies. Based on the findings, we offered some suggestions to investors, stock exchanges, authorities and the listed companies per se to improve the financial information transparency of Vietnamese companies in general and HOSElisted ones in particular, so as to meet information transparency requirements in the era of ASEAN integration.