Real estate stocks jumped yesterday following the State Bank of Viet Nam's announcement of a draft decree offering loans to low-income earners to buy houses.

However, trading was still sluggish on both exchanges.

According to the decree, expected to come into force from April 15, low-income earners can apply for home loans at a preferential interest rate of just 6 per cent per year for a period of three years.

Around VND30 trillion (US$1.43 billion) will be provided in support for the programme, which will be disbursed until 2016.

Thu Duc Housing Development (TDH), An Duong Thao Dien JSC (HAR) and Binh Chanh Construction Investment hit their ceiling prices while Tan Tao Investment Industry (ITA), Licogi 16 (LCG), Hoang Quan Corp (HQC) and Kinh Bac City Development (KBC) all gained between 2.7-4 per cent.

However, Vietinbank (CTG) was the most active code yesterday on the HCM City exchange with trades of 5.2 million shares.

Analysts believe that after CTG was removed from the portfolios of FTSE Viet Nam exchange-traded funds, foreigners unloaded this share to refresh their portfolios for the second quarter.

CTG closed off 2.6 per cent at VND19,000 ($0.90) a share.

On the HCM City exchange, the benchmark VN-Index increased 0.3 per cent on late buying to finish yesterday's session at 474.60 points.

Trading value declined slightly from a day earlier, totalling VND726.4 billion ($34.6 million) on a volume of 46.7 million shares.

The VN30 tracking the top 30 shares on the southern bourse was also higher at 546.15 points.

Meanwhile, on the Ha Noi bourse, the HNX-Index climbed 0.62 per cent to 61.81 points with the trading value reaching VND313.6 billion ($14.9 million).

Two property shares, Sacomreal (SCR) and PetroVietnam Construction (PVX), led trades here with 7 million shares and 6.3 million shares changing hands, respectively.

SCR rose 2.4 per cent to VND8,500 a share while PVX edged up 3.5 per cent to VND5,900 each