by Piyaporn Hawiset
Vietnam's investments in agriculture and rural development will account for 20.5 percent of the state budget in 1999, surpassing the 1998 amount by 61.5 percent, Vietnam's daily Vietnam News reported May 25, 1999.
Priority investments and foreign Official Development Assistance (ODA) in agricultural projects include 5 billion U.S. dollars to fund a project to plant five million hectares of forest and to assist the national program for hunger elimination and poverty reduction in 1,715 poor communes, the report quoted Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) as saying.
Other key projects focus on development of irrigation works and water resource management, development of traditional rural trades and agro-forestry products processing industries, upgrading rural infrastructure and supporting agricultural promotion programs. Vietnam's agricultural experts, however, said that the investment is only modest, meeting only half the sector's needs.
There are now more than 20 international donors to agricultural development projects in Vietnam. Among them are the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. By the end of 1998, a total 130 ODA agricultural projects had received 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in investment.
This means that shortly there should be considerable opportunities in Vietnam for internaitonal consultants to participate in Vietnam's development of the water resources management, irrigation, agriculture and rural infrastructure development effort.