What is the poverty rate in Vietnam?
Vietnam and the World Bank
A series of projects have been implemented to reduce poverty and improve the living conditions of the poor in Vietnam, which contributed to the Vietnam's transition to a middle-income country. The First Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project (launched in 2001), which aimed at improving infrastructure and rural services and covered broad sectors such as rural roads, irrigation systems, water supply, education and health systems, coupled with the Second project launched in 2010 with similar but further goal of building up the local capacity of project managing, resulted in an at least increase of 15 percent in per capita income among project beneficiaries in the poorest region of the country. Other series of projects, including 10 Poverty Reduction Support Credit (PRSC) projects starting from 2001 and 3 Rural Financial Projects and so on, also had benefited rural private enterprises and households through increasing their access to finance. The population in Vietnam living under the national policy line decreased from nearly 60% in 1993 to 13.5% in 2014. But during the implementation of PRSC 10, problems such as a lack of strong local knowledge and inefficient cooperation, were also seen to cause a delay of the project operation and raise concern about program quality, and the borrower performance of the project was rated as unsatisfactory.
Vietnam and the World Bank
In an effort to support the inclusive reforms in Vietnam and foster the country's shift from a centrally planned economy to market-based economy, the 25-year partnership of World Bank and Vietnam has witnessed over 270 projects or advisory and analytic activities conducted through the collaboration of International Development Association (IDA), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which covered the areas of poverty reduction, education, rural and urban services, infrastructure, new energy and environmental protection and so on. In recent years, the World Bank and Vietnam's Government have made joint efforts to focus on “strengthening competitiveness, improving sustainability, increasing opportunity” to gain greater progress for Vietnam as a middle-income country. At the moment, the existing net commitment from World Bank to Vietnam is about US$9.5 billion. For the future engagement in Vietnam, “inclusive growth, investment in people, environmental sustainability and good governance”, as illustrated in the new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for 2018-2022, would be the priorities of WBG.