Japan and ADB Assist Urban Poor in Viet Nam's Thanh Hoa Province

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Japan and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are tackling problems faced by the urban poor in Viet Nam’s Thanh Hoa province, funding $2 million in improvements to infrastructure, increasing skills training and enhancing local participation in development planning.

The grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction will be managed by ADB, with the government of Viet Nam providing $400,000 to complete the project’s funding.

Thanh Hoa, which sits on the northernmost part of the central coastal provinces of Viet Nam, has a population of 3.7 million, of which 34% are poor. Some districts have poverty levels of up to 57%.

“While many development projects have directly targeted the rural poor in Than Hoa, none have tried to address poverty by focusing on the economic potential that may exist in key centers. Thanh Hoa has a strong potential for regional socioeconomic development,” said Jeanne Everett, infrastructure specialist of ADB’s Southeast Asia Department.

Thanh Hoa City, the provincial capital, is strategically positioned as a regional hub. It is located 200 kilometers south of Hanoi and is connected by a national road to Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The capital has the potential to drive the economy of the province but is constrained by poor infrastructure.

ADB is providing support for the comprehensive socioeconomic development of small- and medium-sized cities such as Thanh Hoa to strengthen their development links with rural areas and reduce environmental pressures on large cities.

The Than Hoa Province Small Scale Infrastructure Investments and Services in Urban and Peri-Urban Areas project will encourage innovative, participatory approaches to identifying, implementing and operating small-scale urban infrastructure. While decentralization and bottom-up planning have gradually made their way into government policies, not enough is being done in Thanh Hoa and in many other parts of Viet Nam to apply those principles mainly due to lack of local government commitment, the absence of clear guidelines on how to apply such principles and limited community capacity. Bottom-up planning puts emphasis on community consultations and involves a wide range of stakeholders.

The project will provide a venue in which those principles can develop into working partnerships between the community and the local government. It will also provide the community and local governments with the funds, technical support and guidance to carry out new responsibilities under the concept of decentralization and bottom-up planning.

Complementing the undertaking is a project preparatory technical assistance, which will assist Thanh Hoa City in identifying and preparing viable investment proposals, some of which are to be financed by ADB, and which will provide the province with the necessary competitive advantage for regional economic development. The project preparatory technical assistance will advise the province on the final drafting of the City Master Plan to ensure provincial and regional economic expansion, the prioritizing of investment proposals for the city and the province based on their impact on the economy and financing investment proposals through official development assistance with donors, private sector participation and strengthening of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

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