UK Helps Vietnam Pay off US$ 100 Mln Due Debts to WB

UK Helps Vietnam Pay off US$ 100 Mln Due Debts to WB

The British Government has set to pay off 10 per cent of Vietnam’s due debts worth around US$100 million to the World Bank (WB), as part of a plan to help reduce poverty rate in the developing country.

The UK will pay nearly US$100 million to the WB’s International Development Association on behalf of the Vietnamese government from 2005 to 2015 as agreed on by both countries recently.

Vietnamese Minister of Finance Nguyen Sinh Hung handed over a formal letter of acceptance from the Vietnamese government to British Ambassador Robert Gordon and the Director of IDA in Vietnam, in Hanoi yesterday.

At the ceremony hosted by the MoF, Hung said: “On behalf of the Vietnamese people and government, I would like to thank the British government and taxpayers for the generosity.”

“We hope that the UK government’s offer will help us save some more money to focus on sustainable development and poverty reduction in Vietnam.”

British Ambassador Robert Gordon said: “Vietnam has made significant progress in poverty reduction. Through the debt payment, Britain wants to help Vietnam focus on sustainable development and further poverty reduction in order to achieve the Millennium Targets set by the United Nations.

The UK’s multilateral debts relief offer for Vietnam comes under the latest initiative of the British government to provide low-income countries with sufficiently robust public expenditure management to ensure that the additional financing aid progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The British government is also calling upon other donors to participate in debt reduction and will bring this issue to international forums, he added.

Currently, Vietnam’s total foreign debts are estimated at US$14 billion.

Over the past 11 years, international donors pledged huge amounts of ODA totaling nearly US$29 billion (15-20 per cent was non-refundable aid) for the country via 12 Consultative Group (CG) meetings, of which around US$20 billion has been concretized via agreements.

In 2004, foreign donors pledged US$2.834 billion in assistance to Vietnam (US$2.5 billion in 2003) with US$2.25 billion signed and the disbursement amount was US$1.65 billion (US$250 million of grant in aid), up 16 per cent on-year and equaling to the highest figure Vietnam realized in 2000.

The Japanese government, the WB, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) accounted for 80 per cent of the total US$ 1.65 billion disbursed ODA capital in 2004.

• VNS