Donors pledge US$ 2.5 billion for Viet Nam
Ha Noi, Dec. 11 (VNA) -- The donors' community has pledged a total aid of 2.5 billion USD for Viet Nam in 2003, an increase of 4.5 percent over 2002.
This was revealed by Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc with the press after the 10th Consultative Group Meeting closed in Ha Noi today.
"Leading donors include Japan, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Asia Development Bank," he added.
Although the world economy is still beset with difficulties and many donor countries are in the doldrums and donors including Japan have reduced ODA for foreign countries, they pledged to increase aid for Viet Nam, Phuc pointed out.
"The Vietnamese Government highly values this pledge," he stated, stressing that it indicated the donors' strong support for Viet Nam's policy of renewal.
At the Dec. 10-11 meeting, delegates urged Viet Nam to better implement the Comprehensive Strategy on Hunger Elimination, Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development, emphasizing the need to accelerate the process of reform for the goals of strengthened competition, establishment of a public administration, and benefits for the poor during the development process.
They called on Viet Nam to continue with its improvement of the business environment by exerting efforts to further bolster competition in pivotal industries, reduce business expenses to be on par with the regional level, accelerate reforms of the finance-banking system and State-owned system and boost the development of the private economic sector.
The donors and Viet Nam also made progress in discussing ways to ameliorate ODA management and use ODA sources. However, the donors urged Viet Nam to make more efforts in quickening the ODA disbursement, especially by giving more power to local authorities.
