Tet to fire Vietnam horsepower

Officials and Vietnam’s development partners gathered to toast Vietnam’s successes over the last year and hopefully welcome a prosperous New Year  Photo: Duc Thanh

Raising a toast to the Year of the Horse as a time for renewed progress, Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh stated that according to tradition, the Year of the Horse was a time for development and moving forward.  “I strongly believe that Vietnam, with the horse’s powerful strength, will this year surmount all challenges and difficulties to achieve greater success than last year. We will harvest results from economic restructuring, growth renewal and expanding development co-operation,” he stressed.

“On this occasion, on behalf of the Vietnamese government, I would like to extend our sincere thanks to donors, development partners and international friends for your strong co-operation and precious support to Vietnam’s socio-economic development and international integration,” Vinh said. “During the country’s development, Vietnam hopes to continue receiving precious support from the international community.”

On behalf of the development partners, World Bank country director Victoria Kwakwa said, “2014 is the year of strength, speed and hard work. Let us all reaffirm our strong commitment to Vietnam’s continued development and work together to find innovative and creative ways to bring new partnerships and new financing possibilities to achieve this common endeavour.”

Tomoyuki Kimura, country director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), said “I hope we can gather our wisdom to resolve challenging issues and deliver good results. The ADB stands ready to continue supporting the MPI, and working with development partners in a co-ordinating capacity, to achieve our common goals.”

UN resident co-ordinator Pratibha Mehta said Vietnam’s remarkable progress had been acknowledged globally and inspired many countries. “As progress continues, Vietnam itself is likely to become a donor country. The UN is strongly committed to continue supporting Vietnam to address its development challenges.”

Vietnam and its development partners celebrated the 20th anniversary of development co-operation in 2013. The annual Consultative Group (CG) meeting of donors for Vietnam was developed into the Vietnam Development Partnership Forum, which serves as platform for an exchange of views between the government, its development partners, the private sector, local and international civil society organisations, national research institutions and other development actors.

According to the MPI, with the support of donors and its internal strength, Vietnam’s economy saw positive changes with important results, amid big difficulties last year. While the economic growth rate was 5.42 per cent, inflation was maintained at 6.04 per cent, and export turnover reached $132.2 billion, up 15.4 per cent on-year.

The MPI reported that in 2013, almost $4.5 billion in official development assistance (ODA) had been disbursed. Since 1993, total ODA committed to Vietnam has reached nearly $80 billion.