On the afternoon of March 13, in Hanoi, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended the ceremony commemorating 30 years of Vietnam-ADB partnership organized by the State Bank of Vietnam in collaboration with ADB.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa attend the ceremony commemorating 30 years of Vietnam-ADB partnership – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
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Attending the event were Masatsugu Asakawa, ADB President, Nguyen Thi Hong, Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, leaders of ministries, sectors, agencies, diplomatic agencies, and international organizations in Hanoi. Prior to the ceremony, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had a separate meeting with ADB President.
Providing motivation and inspiration for other partners
In his speech at the meeting with ADB President and the commemoration ceremony, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh affirmed that the Vietnamese Government always considers ADB as one of its important, close, reliable, and effective development partners; highly appreciates the presence of the ADB President in Vietnam on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of cooperation, demonstrating a strong message of looking towards the future with a broader vision and more effective cooperation.
The Prime Minister affirmed that Vietnam highly appreciates and is grateful for the ADB’s enthusiastic support in various sectors, especially in poverty reduction in deep, remote, and border areas, healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc., serving the urgent needs of recovery and development in the post-war years. ADB’s support also provides motivation and inspiration for the partners assisting Vietnam, making an important contribution to the achievements that Vietnam has achieved on the path of innovation, international integration, and sustainable development.
The head of the Vietnamese Government drew lessons and experiences from the cooperation between the two sides: To closely follow the situation, clearly define the objectives and tasks for cooperation to be correct and effective; to focus on key issues and priorities in the context of a developing country with many things to do; departments, sectors, and localities must appreciate and effectively use the support of ADB, and fight against negativity and corruption.
According to the Prime Minister, after 30 years, cooperation between Vietnam and ADB has gained more experience and is in the most mature and solid phase; the other hand, Vietnam and Japan have become Comprehensive Strategic Partners, and bilateral cooperation is unlimited as stated by Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, especially in science, technology, and innovation.
Therefore, the cooperation activities between ADB and Vietnam need to be more focused and concentrated, concentrating on investment and development, programs, and projects that change the situation and transform the status, instead of focusing on poverty reduction goals like in the previous phase, with new thinking, methods, and innovative procedures.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh affirmed that the Vietnamese Government always considers ADB as one of its important, close, reliable, and effective development partners – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
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With the spirit of mutual victory, harmonious interests, and shared risks, the Prime Minister hopes that ADB will continue to support Vietnam in terms of capital, technology, institutional building, capacity building, policy consultation, providing motivation and inspiration for other development partners, implementing programs and policies to promote sustainable growth, enhance the competitiveness of the economy, and achieve the country’s development goals by 2030 and 2045.
The Prime Minister suggested that the cooperation between the two sides should focus on key areas such as climate change adaptation, strategic infrastructure projects, especially in the Mekong Delta region, emerging sectors such as semiconductor chips, digital economy, green transformation, circular economy, sharing economy, and private sector development.
In particular, climate change response includes many areas such as electricity, transportation, agriculture, etc., which Vietnam is vigorously implementing, such as the high-quality rice program in the Mekong Delta, low emissions in the Mekong Delta; promoting the production of electric vehicles in the transportation sector, etc. The Prime Minister said that Vietnam has announced plans to implement the JETP Agreement, making efforts to complete the plan to implement Power Plan VIII to be issued this month. Based on that, specific projects will be issued to use funds from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) of the G7 and the Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) of Japan.
The Prime Minister requested ADB to continue to provide suggestions to Vietnam on regulations, institutions, procedures, and sharing for Vietnam to learn from the legal experience of other countries; Vietnam is ready to absorb and learn. The Prime Minister said that he would assign a Deputy Prime Minister to directly lead the continuous review and completion of the legal framework on ODA, foreign concessional loans to overcome obstacles, shorten approval time, speed up the implementation progress of projects, and receive and effectively use the resources of funding partners in general and ADB in particular. The spirit is to solve problems completely, not to prolong them. If there are obstacles in the provisions of the laws, the Government will report to the competent authorities for consideration and decision.
The Prime Minister also requested ADB to continue policy advice, especially macroeconomic, monetary, and fiscal policies that are suitable for the rapidly changing current situation, both present and long-term, especially before unexpected crises.
Vietnam persistently aims to stabilize the macroeconomy, ensure major balances in all circumstances, both control inflation to avoid affecting people’s lives and promote economic growth to improve national strength.
The Prime Minister suggested that the two sides establish a working group to implement cooperation activities and assign the Ministry of Planning and Investment as the focal point for the construction and implementation of projects; the desire for both sides to make more efforts and determination for better and more effective cooperation in the next 30 years, with the spirit of sincerity, trust, and “from the heart to the heart” emotion.
Prior to that, at a separate meeting, the Prime Minister and leaders of ministries and agencies and the ADB President discussed specific difficulties and obstacles in bilateral cooperation.
ADB Director: Both sides have special opportunities
In his sharing at the commemoration and in the exchange with the Prime Minister, Masatsugu Asakawa said that he had visited Vietnam many times, but this was his first visit as ADB President; congratulations on the impressive and comprehensive economic and social development achievements of Vietnam in the past decades despite many difficulties due to the global economy and increasing challenges, especially climate change.
 ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa makes a speech – Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
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ADB-Vietnam relations over the past 30 years have developed rapidly, achieving many achievements, Vietnam is one of the most active partners of ADB. The total amount of ADB’s assistance to Vietnam to date is about 18 billion USD. ADB reiterated its commitment and emphasized that ADB always cares about supporting Vietnam in achieving important, ambitious goals, planning to mobilize resources up to 3 billion USD for about 23 projects in Vietnam in the period 2023-2026.
ADB is ready to continue to support Vietnam in arranging capital for projects in the areas mentioned by the Prime Minister such as energy transition, large-scale infrastructure projects, public-private partnership projects, emerging sectors like artificial intelligence, deeper involvement in the global supply chain of semiconductor manufacturing, private sector development, contributing to mobilizing investment capital from the private sector as well as FDI.
The ADB President highly appreciated Vietnam’s participation in addressing global issues such as empowering women and especially Vietnam’s commitments, visions, determination, efforts, and solutions to cope with climate change, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
As the climate bank of Asia and the Pacific, ADB has committed 2.1 billion USD to Vietnam to implement JETP as well as ETM – a new financial tool for thermal power plants to stop using coal early and use cleaner energy sources. “This is a special opportunity for us,” he said.
In response to the Prime Minister’s precise instructions regarding the two sides’ cooperation activities, he said that ADB not only meets Vietnam’s requirements and desires for support better but also simplifies procedures as proposed by the Prime Minister.
“Finally, we would like to express our appreciation for Vietnam’s cooperation with ADB, for the beautiful development of Vietnam with people who dare to think and dare to do, which has brought about an excellent cooperation model to support the people we serve,” he said.
For his part, Governor of the State Bank Nguyen Thi Hong emphasized ADB’s role and contributions to Vietnam’s development in general and its precious support in the banking sector in particular, through technical assistance, policy consultations for the State Bank of Vietnam, loan programs, and commercial financing for commercial banks.
In its role as the representative agency of the Vietnamese Government at ADB as well as other financial and monetary organizations, during the 30 years of standing side by side and accompanying, the State Bank of Vietnam has made efforts and effectively implemented the role of the Government representative, an important bridge connecting ADB’s policies and activities with national development strategies and policies for each period, thereby maximizing the use of support resources for the priority and important programs and projects of the Government, ministries, sectors, and localities.
In the coming time, the State Bank of Vietnam will be more proactive and proactive in coordinating with ADB as well as other financial and monetary organizations that the State Bank of Vietnam represents to mobilize additional resources to support the Government, ministries, sectors, and localities in achieving socioeconomic development goals.
