The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide 24.8 million USD in loans
for Vietnam ’s policy reforms fostering the country’s inclusive
growth and ensuring further poverty reduction.
An
agreement to this effect was signed between the State Bank of Vietnam
’s Governor Nguyen Van Binh and ADB Country Director for Vietnam
Tomoyuki Kimura, in Hanoi on Jan. 17.
The ADB loan
provides parallel financing to the Poverty Reduction Support Credit
framework, supported by a number of development partners, which aims to
help the Government carry out a wide range of policy reforms in the
areas of business development, social inclusion, natural resource
management, and governance, to ensure successful implementation of the
Ten -Year Socio-economic Development Strategy 2011-2020, and the
Socio-economic Development Plan 2011-2015.
“ Poverty
reduction cannot be sustained without inclusive economic growth,” said
Kimura. “Further Further efforts should be made to accelerate reforms to
strengthen institutional and human capacity, governance, and policies
to address the development challenges and to promote economic growth.”
He said high inflation has eroded some progress in poverty reduction made by Vietnam in recent years.
Though Vietnam ’s poverty rate declined significantly from 15.5
percent in 2006 to 9.5 percent in 2010 as a result of the country's
rapid economic growth and improved social protection programmes ,
selected groups remain vulnerable to poverty and the poverty incidence
among ethnic minority groups remains very high at more than 50 percent
in 2009, he said.
The ADB Country Director
suggested that t o overcome macroeconomic difficulties and mitigate
the adverse impacts of global economic crises, with support from foreign
financial institutions, including ADB, the Vietnamese Government should
strengthen the finance sector, impose discipline on state-owned
enterprises, and improve the efficiency of public investments./.
