World Bank President directly signs to lend Vietnam 876 million USD

At noon on July 17, at the Government headquarters, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung received Mr. Jim Yong Kim - President of the World Bank who is on a working visit to Vietnam.

At the meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and World Bank (WB) President Jim Yong Kim spent time discussing issues of economic reform, energy security, supporting the poor, promoting cooperative relations, orienting the World Bank's assistance and implementing preferential loans for Vietnam in the coming period.

The signing ceremony of the loan from the WB was witnessed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the Ministers of Health, Industry and Trade, Agriculture and Rural Development and the Government Office.

The WB President highly appreciated the socio-economic development situation of Vietnam, the process of economic restructuring, strategic orientations and development solutions in the coming time. The WB President said that in order to develop rapidly and sustainably, Vietnam needs to further promote institutional reform, develop the private sector, ensure equality of opportunity and support the poor to consolidate and further enhance the achievements in poverty reduction in recent years.

“Today, I am pleased to confirm that the World Bank Group will continue its partnership with Vietnam as it moves toward becoming a middle-income country. Vietnam’s lessons are useful to other countries and are useful to us, helping us finance our shared goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity. Vietnam is a development success story and its story needs to be shared with the world,” President Jim Yong Kim said at a brief press conference with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung after the meeting.

Regarding the cooperation between Vietnam and the WB, the two sides affirmed that they will continue to pay attention to directing the deepening of cooperation in policy advice, finance, development assistance and technical support.

Under the witness of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, WB President Jim Yong Kim and Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Nguyen Van Binh signed preferential loan agreements for five programs and projects, with a total value of 876 million USD.

This capital will finance programs and projects whose beneficiaries are people and businesses in most localities in Vietnam. These are projects on perfecting the legal framework to enhance the competitiveness of the economy; investing in the fields of electric power; urban development; strengthening the capacity of human resources in the health sector and preventing climate change.

“We look forward to working with the Government of Vietnam to ensure that all of the priorities of the Government and the people of Vietnam are realized,” said Chairman Jim Yong Kim.

For his part, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung emphasized that the Vietnamese Government highly appreciates the World Bank in general and President Jim Yong Kim in particular for supporting and agreeing to allocate nearly 4 billion USD from IDA preferential loans to Vietnam for the 2014-2017 period.

Thus, continuously for 9 years from 2008 to 2017, Vietnam was the country receiving the second largest source of IDA preferential loans in the world.

“This demonstrates the recognition, trust and support of the World Bank and the international community for Vietnam’s reform process. The Vietnamese Government highly appreciates and commits to taking all measures to ensure that this valuable loan source will be deployed quickly and used most effectively. I believe that with the efforts of both sides, the Vietnam - World Bank development partnership will develop to new heights; the World Bank will always be a reliable companion of Vietnam in the development process,” said Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

At the press conference, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and WB President Jim Yong Kim announced that the two sides agreed to coordinate with the WB's assistance to develop a strategic report called the Vietnam 2030 Report to help Vietnam set out long-term development orientations.

“The World Bank Group and Vietnam are preparing to conduct a very important study to determine what Vietnam will need to do to become a modern industrialized nation within a generation,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

According to GDVN