News

WB continues to fund for Vietnam in infrastructure development

Summary

On the afternoon September 11, 2018, Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung had a meeting with Ms. Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank's Vice President for the East Asia and Pacific.

Updated on : 16-09-2018

 

The meeting.

 

At the meeting, Minister Dinh Tien Dung welcomed Ms. Victoria Kwakwa and the World Bank’s delegation for visiting and working with the Ministry of Finance on the occasion of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN 2019 in Vietnam.

Minister Dinh Tien Dung would like to thank and highly appreciated the cooperation and assistance of the World Bank in general and Ms. Victoria KwaKwa in particular for financial and technical supports and policy advisory to help the Vietnam’ Government and the Ministry of Finance to obtain important achievements in socio-economic development in recent years.

"The Ministry of Finance always considers the WB and Ms.Victoria Kwakwa as trustworthy partners and friends. The opportunity to meet with Ms. Kwakwa since the meeting between the two parties in June 2018 has shown that the WB and the Ministry of Finance always attach importance to the partnership between the two parties” Minister Dinh Tien Dung confirmed.

Also, the Minister said that, the Ministry of Finance will continue to commit to promoting the results and enhancing further cooperation with the WB in the coming time to effectively implement the key task of public financial management reform.

In particular, the Minister hoped that the WB would continue to support Vietnam in general and the Ministry of Finance in particular in stabilizing the fiscal situation, promoting budget management and sustainability of public debt, restructuring the State-owned enterprises, developing the Government Financial Information System, and training staff for the successful implementation of Socio-Economic Development Strategy for the period 2011-2020 and the Finance Strategy by 2020.

Ms. Victoria Kwakwa highly appreciated the results achieved by Vietnam over the past time and said that public debt to GDP ratio of Vietnam is currently tending to decrease; the reform of public finance management in the fields of tax, audit, accounting, financial solutions, disaster risk insurance and financial markets obtained great achievements.

"The Moody's credit rating agency upgraded Vietnam's credit rating from B1 to Ba3 with assessments on outlook of stability due to its good growth potential and positive public debt structure towards reducing foreign debt, extending the term of government bonds and improving the operation of the banking system. The upgrade of the Vietnam’s credit rating by Moody’s is a good signal" the WB representative said.

Regarding the public debt management in Vietnam, Ms. Victoria Kwakwa highly appreciated the Ministry of Finance for the implementation of many solutions, especially the solution to extend the term of loans with low interest rates, promote domestic capital instead of foreign loans, which has played an important role in controlling public debt.

Also, Ms. Victoria Kwakwa said that in the global context of issues such as US-China trade tensions, the developing countries such as Vietnam shall continue to make effort in managing their macroeconomics careful and sustainable manner and diversifying loan sources. That is one of the best ways to reduce risks in the domestic market.

At the same time, the World Bank’s Vice President pledged that the WB is always ready to continue its cooperation, technical and financial support for Vietnam in infrastructure development and quality improvement of human resources as well as ensuring the sustainability of public debt.

Agreeing with Ms. Victoria Kwakwa, Minister Dinh Tien Dung said that public investment is one of the important roles of economic growth, in the context that Vietnam still needs to mobilize resources to continue to invest in infrastructure such as transport infrastructure, seaport and etc for sustainable economic development.

However, it is also necessary to consider and evaluate the overall effectiveness of the loan use of constructions and projects. The Minister hopes that the WB will continue to support Vietnam in assessing the efficiency of the loan use in the coming time.

Source: Customs News