Vietnam stock market to resume trading on Friday

HANOI, May 29 (Reuters) - Vietnam's stock exchange .VNI will reopen on Friday after a technical error halted trading for three days in a row this week.

Trading has been halted since Tuesday after an error in the operating system but experts have fixed it and tested it on the trading floor, the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) said in a statement on Thursday.

The nearly 8-year-old market jumped 23 percent last year amid investor excitement about Vietnam's economic potential but has since slumped 55 percent, making it the worst performing market in Asia so far this year.

"After the test, the trading system at HOSE is now working fine," the statement said.

On Monday, the market ended 1.76 percent lower at 420.51 points, marking three weeks of declines within a daily trading band of +/- 2 percent, which was established by the regulator to stabilise the market.

On Thursday, Fitch Ratings lowered the outlook on Vietnam's BB-minus sovereign rating to negative from stable as double-digit inflation, a yawning trade deficit and banking woes strain the developing market economy [ID:nHKG197848].

In Hanoi, the smaller over-the-counter market .HASTCI has been operating normally. The index lost 0.46 percent to close at 120.72 points on Thursday.

The combined market capitalisation of the two exchanges is about $15 billion. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Grant McCool and Anshuman Daga)