World Bank agrees $390m assistance programme with Vietnam

25 Apr 14
Vietnam’s central bank and the World Bank have signed loan agreements worth $390m to support three projects across the country, including reforms to social assistance programmes to improve the efficiency of public spending.

By Judith Ugwumadu  | 25 April 2014

Vietnam’s central bank and the World Bank have signed loan agreements worth $390m to support three projects across the country, including reforms to social assistance programmes to improve the efficiency of public spending.

The package will also provide an upgrade the country’s infrastructure and boost the nation’s agricultural sector.

The projects are intended to address different drivers of poverty in Vietnam including limited employment opportunities, lack of connectivity and fragmented and ineffective social assistance programs, the World Bank’s country director Victoria Kwakwa said.

Among the projects, the loans will be used to fund the Social Assistance System Strengthening Project, worth $60m. The scheme will put in place the elements of a strengthened social assistance system, including national databases of poor and near-poor households and social assistance beneficiaries, and a management information system.

This will support the government’s objective of reducing fragmentation of social assistance programmes by allowing existing schemes to be consolidated, which will improve the effectiveness of public spending on social assistance, the World Bank said.

The $150m Central Highlands Poverty Reduction Project will support government moves to address extreme poverty in the country’s Central Highlands region by financing infrastructure improvements. The scheme will also improve project management and public administration across 26 poor districts in the six provinces of Dak Lak, Dak Nong, Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai.

The Irrigated Agriculture Improvement Project, worth $180m, will increase the efficiency of water and land-use to enhance agricultural productivity across more than 83,400 hectares of agricultural land in the Central Coast Region, the bank said. It will also reduce the vulnerability of farmers and rural households to ‘adverse climatic events’.

Funding for all three projects comes from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s Group’s funding window for low-income countries.

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