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View the Final Report
[PDF: 498Kb | 133 pages]

Pilot and Demonstration Activities
Poverty Impact of Public Irrigation Expenditures in Viet Nam

This PDA showed how effective public irrigation expenditures—such as infrastructures and systems—are increasing the income of Viet Nam's rural poor. Read the case study results as it compared four project areas.

  
PDA SNAPSHOT
Project Sites Ho Chi Minh City, Tay Ninh, Quang, Cam Son, and Song Chu, Viet Nam
Cost Estimate $50,000
Status Completed
Approval Date 2002
Completion Date 31 May 2004
Category Rural Services
Type Policy Reforms
Proponent

Pieter Smidt, Extended Mission in Sumatra
Partner —
BACKGROUND

Eighty-percent of Viet Nam's population lives in rural areas, and 70% of the labor force depends on agriculture. About one third of the population lives below the poverty line, and 85% of the poor lives in rural areas.

The primary expenditure instrument used by the Government to improve rural incomes has been subsidized irrigation investments.1 Irrigation accounts for about half of all public expenditures in the agricultural sector, and three-quarters of all capital investments (about $250 million per year).

Rice is the major irrigated crop in Viet Nam. Rice production in the country has soared from 20 million tons in 1990 to over 30 million tons by the end of the decade. Agricultural liberalization has clearly been a driving force in this expansion. However, the impact of irrigation investments, which have more than doubled during the 1990s, is less clear. A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in 2000 concluded that there is a weak relationship between agricultural output and public expenditures in the provinces.

The primary question posed by this study is: How effective are public irrigation expenditures in increasing rural incomes, particularly for the poor?

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OBJECTIVES
  • To help improve the strategy for rural transformation, one of the key themes of Viet Nam's Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS)
  • To help the government and donors understand the links between government expenditure and poverty reduction
  • To help provide an empirical foundation for an analysis of agricultural public expenditures

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EXPECTED RESULTS
  Outputs     Indicators  

Quantitative and qualitative findings on the irrigation infrastructure and management systems from the following towns: Ho Chi Minh City, Tay Ninh, Quang, Cam Son and Song Chu.

These findings will test the following hypotheses:

  • There will be a statistically significant difference in farmer incomes between HCMC and Tay Ninh that can be attributed primarily to better provincial management
  • There will be a statistically significant difference between the rehabilitated and non-rehabilitated irrigation systems in Quang Nam
  • There will be a statistically significant difference in Song Chu between the rehabilitated areas with technical assistance, and those without
  • There will be differences between head-enders and tail-enders in all data sets, with the most pronounced difference being in Cam Son

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REPORT CARD

This PDA was completed on 31 May 2004. Read the Final Report [PDF].

  Achievements     Recommendations  

This PDA
  • Provided valuable inputs that may be of use to planners and decision makers in developing a country’s irrigation sector action plan
  • Demonstrated a successful partnership between funding institutions—ADB and the World Bank partnered in this research project
  • Attested the effectiveness of rehabilitating existing irrigation systems in reducing poverty

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REPORTS AND RELATED DOCUMENTS


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  1. The term irrigation is used in the broad sense to cover all agricultural water control infrastructure, including drainage, flood control, and supply of water for crops.