Media Center

News Release

Email this   printer friendly format

Improving Livelihoods For Viet Nam's Poorest Communities

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (17 December 2001) - Some 350,000 rural Vietnamese, many of them indigenous and from ethnic minorities, in the impoverished Central Region will have better living conditions as a result of a concessional loan of US$43.1 million approved today by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The project includes several socio-economic initiatives to help 139 poor upland communes (which comprise several villages) in four provinces. War, disease, floods and forced resettlement have left much of the Central Region's population feeling powerless. Over half the children suffer varying degrees of malnutrition.

This project will prioritize food security to combat malnutrition. It will also provide micro-finance services and skills upgrading training as well as develop small-scale infrastructure. Communes will receive grants to build, rehabilitate or replace small roads, bridges, irrigation and flood protection works, and drinking water systems.

"The infrastructure works will generate job opportunities for local labor and will provide a safety net of sorts, especially during the off season for agriculture," says ADB Rural Development Specialist Donneth Walton.

The project, which will stress community participation, complements the government's Program 135 to assist the remote and mountainous communes.

The ADB loan will finance 57 percent of the total project cost and will come from its Asian Development Fund. It has a maturity of 32 years, including a grace period of 8 years. Interest will be 1 percent per annum during the grace period and 1.5 percent per annum thereafter. The United Kingdom's Department of International Development is providing cofinancing of $16.5 million, with the Government and the beneficiaries funding the balance.

The provincial people's committees of Kon Tom, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue provinces and Viet Nam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development will be the executing agencies for the project, which is scheduled for completion in March 2007.

Contacts