IFAD Vietnam

[1] IFAD works for and with the poorest people in Vietnam, including ethnic minorities, small-scale farmers and households headed by women.

Strategies to reduce poverty and improve living conditions include building partnerships, strengthening institutional capacity and promoting participation.

To do this, IFAD finances programmes and projects that focus on developing and testing innovative approaches to poverty reduction that can be replicated and scaled up by the government and other agencies.

Building on extensive dialogue with the government, the COSOP 2008-2012 focuses on four interlinked strategic objectives (SOs): IFAD's country programme supports operations in 11 poor provinces of Vietnam.

From 2002 to 2010 in Tuyen Quang province, the country programme supported poverty reduction and economic growth through the promotion of participatory, decentralized community development, and targeted poor upland ethnic minority groups and women.

The programme's goal is to improve the productivity, income levels and food security of poor households, especially of ethnic minorities and women.

Around 270 village awareness seminars on market-based approaches have been conducted and 377 common interest groups (CIGs) related to the value chains have been established, with about 10,300 household members.

Moreover, by being part of the CIGs, the poor household members have an opportunity to work with better-off farmers, who have more experience in production practices and market linkages.

The programme's goal is to help develop market and business opportunities for poor rural people in Ben Tre and Cao Bang provinces.

The programme is a partner in the Making Markets Work Effectively for the Poor (M4P) initiative supported by DFID and the Asian Development Bank.

Grant-related activities introduce innovative ideas for targeting rural poor people and enabling them to participate in the decisions affecting their lives.

Working as partners in the Decentralized Programme for Rural Poverty Reduction in Ha Giang and Quang Binh provinces, IFAD and Norway have agreed upon a US$5.0 million debt swap for incremental investment activities.

[16] Past agricultural growth was largely based on bringing additional physical factors of production into use, including land, irrigation water, labour and new technologies.

Further growth acceleration in Vietnam during the 1990s was brought about through institutional restructuring that created incentives to invest and enhance productivity in a market-oriented economy.

Meanwhile, the country's poorest rural people generally have small plots of low-quality land or are landless, and their opportunities for off-farm employment are scarce.