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.

Source VNA