On Monday 21 September 2026, Vietnam stops being a frontier market in FTSE Russell’s indices. At the open, the first tranche of Vietnamese stocks enters the FTSE Global Equity Index Series as a Secondary Emerging market. The reclassification was announced on 7 October 2025 and confirmed at FTSE’s interim review on 7 April 2026.
For Thai listed companies the index mechanics matter less than something that came with the upgrade. The ministerial circular that cleared Vietnam’s path also made English disclosure law. Since 1 January 2025, every Vietnamese listed company has had to publish its periodic disclosure in English as well as Vietnamese. That includes the annual report and its environment-social-governance section. Thailand’s exchange rules still carve the annual report out of their English-translation duty by name.
What happens on Monday
FTSE is phasing Vietnam in rather than switching it on. According to its reclassification FAQ (v1.3, August 2026), 27 Vietnamese securities passed the eligibility screen for the FTSE Global All Cap Index: three large caps, three mid caps and 21 small caps. They enter in four tranches. FTSE will check that index trackers can replicate each step before it moves to the next, so later tranches are not automatic.
The numbers are small. At full inclusion FTSE projects Vietnam at 0.3089% of the FTSE Emerging Index and 0.4880% of FTSE Emerging All Cap. The first tranche is 0.0310%. Thailand’s own weight in FTSE Emerging was 1.52% across 44 constituents on 31 August 2026, about five times what Vietnam will reach. Malaysia was at 1.56%, Indonesia 0.70% and the Philippines 0.40%. Vietnam is not about to drain Thailand’s passive allocation, and we will not pretend otherwise.
The circular that unlocked the upgrade
What does matter to Thai issuers is how Vietnam got here. The instrument that unlocked the upgrade was Circular 68/2024/TT-BTC, signed on 18 September 2024 and in force from 2 November 2024. Its headline change let foreign institutional investors buy shares without pre-funding. That fixed the settlement criteria FTSE had rated “Restricted”, and the Vietnamese government’s own portal described it as removing the bottleneck to an upgrade on FTSE’s criteria.
The same circular also rewrote Article 5 of Circular 96/2020, Vietnam’s disclosure rulebook, to require English. Listed organisations and large public companies must publish periodic information in English from 1 January 2025. Extraordinary and on-request information followed on 1 January 2026. Smaller public companies join in 2027 and 2028. Where the two versions differ, the Vietnamese text prevails.
To be precise about cause and effect: FTSE did not upgrade Vietnam because of English. We read FTSE’s September 2025 announcement, its March 2026 interim review, the Vietnam FAQ and its July 2026 country-classification process paper, and none of them mentions English or language at all. The upgrade came from settlement reform, handling of failed trades and access for global brokers. English came in the same package because Vietnam treated foreign-investor access as one project.
What Vietnam now has to publish in English
Vietnam’s annual report is prescribed on a form, Appendix IV to Circular 96/2020. It is periodic information, so it has been inside the English requirement since January 2025 for every listed company. Section 6 of that form carries a bilingual heading, “Environment-Social-Governance (ESG) Report of the Company”. Item 6.1 asks for “Total direct and indirect GHG emission”, followed by materials, energy, water, environmental compliance and labour. The form’s own template is printed in both languages.
Enforcement is real but light. Decree 306/2025/ND-CP, in force since 9 January 2026, fines an organisation VND 30–50 million, under US$2,000, for not fully complying with the rules on the means, form or language of disclosure. We could not find an official compliance count, and we would treat any quoted percentage with caution.
| Vietnam | Thailand | |
|---|---|---|
| English duty on routine exchange disclosures | Yes, phased from 2025 | Yes, Thai with English translation via SETLink |
| English duty on the annual report | Yes, periodic info from 1 Jan 2025 | No, annual report named as the Thai-only exception |
| ESG and GHG section inside the annual report | Appendix IV §6, incl. total GHG | Inside the 56-1 One Report, Thai filing |
| Version that prevails | Vietnamese | Thai |
| ISSB adoption roadmap | None published | SET50 from FY2027 |
Where Thailand stands
Thailand is not an English-free market. SET’s electronic-disclosure regulation, Bor.Jor./Or. 01-00, clause 4, already requires listed companies to disclose through SETLink “in the Thai language with the English translation”. The same clause then carves out the company information statement and the annual report, which are disclosed in Thai. So the 56-1 One Report, which is where a Thai company’s sustainability and climate disclosure lives, is the document the rulebook deliberately leaves Thai-only. An English edition is voluntary.
The SEC’s adoption of IFRS S1 and S2 does not change that. The roadmap starts with SET50 companies for FY2027, reporting in 2028, and attaches no language condition. No final ISSB notification had been published when we last checked the SEC register in August, and we have seen none since. What the ISSB timetable means for the bilingual report →
The index providers read what you publish. MSCI’s 2026 Global Market Accessibility Review (June 2026) lists “availability in English” as part of its Information Flow assessment, alongside quality, timeliness, granularity and affordability. On Thailand it says, under equal rights to foreign investors, that “company related information is not always readily available in English.” It uses near-identical words about Vietnam, and notes that Vietnam’s English roadmap is something MSCI “will monitor”. Korea gets a mention for its mandatory English disclosure framework, which reaches all KOSPI-listed companies in 2027.
Quality, timeliness, granularity, availability in English, and affordability of information all play a role in this assessment.
MSCI, 2026 Global Market Accessibility Review, §2.3.2.2 Information FlowFTSE Russell’s ESG Scores work the same way at company level. There is no questionnaire: FTSE scores from public disclosure. Thai is not among the key research languages its ESG FAQ lists (v1.5, §1.8), although FTSE says it recognises local languages and the Japanese edition of the same FAQ leaves the list open. CDP will not score a response submitted in Thai, and FTSE calls CDP information material to the ESG Score. Under CBAM, the operator’s emissions report must be submitted in English. How each rater treats language →
What the evidence does not show
We would rather you heard the limits of this argument from us than from a sceptical board member.
None of the four FTSE Vietnam documents we read uses the word. The country-classification criteria are about trading, settlement and access, not reporting language.
SET’s December 2025 market report put foreign investors at 54.08% of total trading value, more than any other investor group. Language is plainly not keeping them out of the market.
Jeanjean et al. (JIBS, 2015) link voluntary English reporting to more foreign ownership and analyst following, in European firms. No peer-reviewed study links disclosure language to ESG ratings.
A 2023 working paper finds analysts’ forecasts improved after machine translation spread. A global reader can get the gist of Thai. What they can’t get is your wording.
So the claim we make is narrow. A foreign analyst will usually read the English version of your disclosure. If you don’t publish one, someone else’s translation decides what your climate targets, emissions boundary and governance statements say. Vietnam has made that edition compulsory and made the company answerable for it. Thailand leaves it to you, which means you can do it well or not at all.
The regional bar is moving on assurance too
One more regional signal landed this week. On 17 September 2026, Malaysia’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability Reporting deferred mandatory reasonable assurance on Scope 1 and 2 emissions by a year, to reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2028 for Group 1. It cited a review of the first 91 Group 1 issuers that found disclosure quality still needs work. It also named ISSA 5000 as the only recognised assurance standard and dropped its recommendation of ISAE 3000 (Revised) and ISO standards.
That matters here because Thailand’s assurance standard, TSSA 5000, is TFAC’s adoption of ISSA 5000, and SET50 assurance starts from FY2027. The disclosure and the assurance are converging on the same international standards across ASEAN, and they are being read in English. What SET50’s first climate disclosure has to contain →
What Thai issuers should take from this
FTSE publishes its 2026 annual country classification announcement on 6 October 2026, and MSCI’s June review flags Thailand’s English gap in plain words. Neither will change what the SEC requires of your One Report. They do show what the providers assessing your market are looking at. Track the dates in our regulatory tracker →
- Vietnam’s annual report, including its ESG and GHG section, must be published in English from 2025. Thailand’s 56-1 One Report has no such duty.
- FTSE’s upgrade was about settlement and access, not English. Don’t let anyone sell you the opposite.
- MSCI does assess availability in English, and it names Thailand’s gap explicitly.
- FTSE ESG Scores come from public disclosure only, and Thai is not on FTSE’s listed research languages.
- Malaysia has made ISSA 5000 its only recognised assurance standard. Thailand’s TSSA 5000 follows the same standard.
- The English edition is voluntary here, so its accuracy is yours to control, or someone else’s to guess.
Othello builds that English edition under an ISO 17100 Translate–Edit–Proofread workflow, clause-mapped to the Thai original so the two versions say the same thing. The advisory team and the TGO CFO/CFP carbon work sit behind it. Why the English edition is the one analysts read →
See what a foreign analyst sees
We map your published disclosure against the documents FTSE Russell assesses and show you, document by document, what has no English edition. It is free.
Run the free Gap AuditSources: FTSE Russell, FTSE Equity Country Classification September 2025 Annual Announcement (7 October 2025), March 2026 Interim Country Classification Review (7 April 2026), Reclassification of Vietnam from Frontier to Secondary Emerging Market Status – FAQ v1.3 (August 2026), FTSE Equity Country Classification Process v3.4 (July 2026) and FTSE Emerging Index factsheet (data as at 31 August 2026); Vietnam Ministry of Finance, Circular 68/2024/TT-BTC and Circular 96/2020/TT-BTC (Art. 3, Art. 10, Appendix IV); Government of Vietnam portal baochinhphu.vn (18 September 2024); MSCI, 2026 Global Market Accessibility Review (June 2026); The Stock Exchange of Thailand, Regulation Bor.Jor./Or. 01-00, clause 4; SEC Thailand, News No. 298/2568 (ISSB roadmap); FTSE Russell, ESG Scores and Indices FAQ v1.5, §§1.6 and 1.8; CDP Terms of Disclosure §12.3; Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2547, Art. 10(4); Securities Commission Malaysia, ACSR media release (17 September 2026); Jeanjean, Stolowy, Erkens & Yohn, Journal of International Business Studies 46(2), 2015. Vietnamese texts translated by Othello. Decree 306/2025/ND-CP is read from a consolidated legal text; it has no official English version.
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