Vietnam

Vietnam's rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in the last two decades benefitted from the policy and legal reforms embodied in the Land Laws of... Show More + 1987, 1993 and 2003 and subsequent related legal acts. This note outlines reforms related to four main themes. The first relates to the needed reform for agriculture land use to create opportunity to enhance effectiveness of land use as well as to secure farmers' rights in land use. Prolonging the duration of agricultural land tenure would give land users greater incentives to invest and care for the land. Raising the land holding ceiling and allowing greater land accumulation would facilitate greater economies of scale, and extending the rights of agricultural land users to alter the land use purpose will further improve efficiency. This scope for more flexible land use will become increasingly important in the context of climate change, with farmers needing to make a range of adjustments based upon expected weather patterns and the associated risks. The second set of priority reforms is to create transparent and equitable land acquisition and compensation by the State. Limiting the use of compulsory land acquisition only to cases for the public's benefit would similarly give land users more fairness and more confidence in their rights related to land. By relying predominantly on voluntary land conversions, there would also be a stronger sense of equity in those cases when land users actually do lose their land. Changing the focus of land compensation pricing (in cases of compulsory land acquisition), and introducing innovations such as benefit sharing, land pooling and land readjustment are also essential for generating a sense of fairness. Creating an efficient grievance redress mechanism at the investment project level would reduce complaints, speed up project implementation and facilitate social stability. A third set of priority reforms is that the land law should offer the opportunity to reaffirm and strengthen the land use rights of vulnerable groups, such as women, the poor and ethnic minority communities. Land management oversight can be made more efficient by amending the land management decentralization and building monitoring and evaluation systems. Expanding the coverage of Land Use Rights Certificates (LURCs) and ensuring the rights and benefits of the land users would further help improve efficiency and fairness. Finally, the fourth set of priority reforms is aimed at making the governance system more effective and accountable. Developing a more flexible and effective land planning management system, and improving transparency of land and anti-corruption in land management are all needed to take Vietnam's land governance system closer to that worthy of a middle income country. Show Less -

Vietnam's economic emergence is perhaps best experienced along its rural roads: over 175,000 kilometers of pavement, rubble, and dirt track extend to two-thirds of the... Show More + country's population, including nearly all of the poorest people, who live among its productive farms, lush forests, and meandering river valleys. In recent years, road investments in Vietnam's rural areas have improved socioeconomic development and have promoted gender equity, social participation, improved school attendance, and more inclusive health services to impoverished regions. However, all but a few hundred communes remain off-grid, and infrastructural roadblocks and bureaucratic potholes have delayed the goal of a fully integrated road system. The World Bank's Third Rural Transport Project (RTP3) supported a win-win solution: employing ethnic minority women to sustainably manage road maintenance through an innovative participatory approach to local development. This smart lesson describes the experience of improving the roads and women's lives in rural Vietnam. Show Less -

Land, and its proper management, is a central issue in developing countries. Efficient use and management of land are key contributors to maximizing the potential benefits... Show More + of sustainable socioeconomic development. Accurate and accessible land information is a necessary requirement for sustainable rural and urban development, which will contribute to the elimination of poverty. A well-functioning land market is crucial for achieving these goals and a prerequisite for a land market to function properly includes easy, rapid and cost-effective access to land information. Although the Vietnam Land Law (2003) aims at facilitating the development of a land market, there are still impediments to the growth of the land market due to a lack of access to land information. Consequently, land information users depend on personal contacts or approach land sellers through informal means. Therefore, enhancing access to land information is of high priority as land information is fundamental to decision-making on land investment and management. Although the promulgation of these land management laws and regulations is considered significant and substantial progress in improving access to land information, there is a lack of systematic empirical evidence as to how well the transparency provisions of the legal framework on land management in Vietnam have been implemented in practice. Against this background, this report is prepared to document the actual disclosure of land information as required by the laws and regulations. Show Less -

Vietnam's growing economy relies heavily on its transport infrastructure for a variety of purposes, from meeting the daily needs of its people, to supporting tourism... Show More + and trade. Since the late 1980s, development of the transport sector has grown at unprecedented rates. Between 2000 and 2006, passenger transport volume doubled; freight traffic volume has increased by 70 percent; and each of the main forms of transport (road, railway, aviation, inland waterways, and maritime) has steadily increased in volume. Show Less -

This report presents lessons from a pilot project that supported undertaking of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of the Socio- Economic Development Master Plan... Show More + for Red River Delta (hereafter RRD SEDMP). This SEA has been conducted by a internal working group which operated within the Development Strategy Institute (DSI) which is a planning arm of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The SEA tested an assessment methodology recommended in the draft MPI Guidelines for SEA of Socio-Economic Development Strategies, Master Plans and Plans. The entire SEA process was facilitated by the World Bank and was supported by one International Consultant and two Local Consultants (see chapter 1 for details). The report summarizes the key strengths and weaknesses of this pilot SEA. The pilot SEA has generated several lessons regarding SEA methodology and process management in specific conditions of Vietnam. Show Less -

Vietnam's forests remain dependent on public resources, including international development assistance, for the delivery of public and private services that include... Show More + timber production, state forest management, forest protection and biodiversity conservation, and extension and research. Public subsidies are also provided to smallholder forest owners to stimulate investments into the sector. For the Government it is important to efficiently manage public resources as well as secure adequate resource flows from private actors to achieve the sector's development objectives. This study provides an overview of the more recent developments in the forestry sector as well as basic analytical support to the Government, in particular policy makers in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Planning and Investment, with regard to structure, trends, and main functions of public and other expenditure in the forestry sector. The study assesses resource adequacy and whether public spending is appropriately prioritized and aligned with sector objectives. Given the constraints of limited availability and quality of data, the overall picture of sector expenditure remains incomplete, but it nevertheless provides a useful basis for further analytical work and discussion. Show Less -

The Centre for Community Support Development Studies (CECODES) was selected to be the Independent monitoring organization for Resettlement Implementation of constructing... Show More + access and operation road to Trung Son Hydropower Project as stated in the contract, signed on February 20th 2009 by and between CECODES and the Project Management Unit of Trung Son Hydropower Project (Trung Son PMB) under Electricity of Vietnam (EVN). In accordance with the Contract, CECODES shall undertake two missions of monitoring the resettlement implementation in the construction, operation road of Trung Son hydropower plant from February 2009 to May 2010. Following the resettlement implementation progress carried out by the Resettlement Committees (RC) of districts in the correspondence dated July 28th 2009, Trung Son PMB requested CECODES to mobilize consultants for the first monitoring mission in this road. The monitoring results are presented in the report in compliance with the outline: part one. Introduction to Trung Son Hydropower project and the construction, operation road to Trung Son hydropower plant; part two: objectives and tasks of Independent monitoring; part three: monitoring methodology and method; part four: monitoring results; part five: conclusions and recommendations for bettering Resettlement Plan (RP) implementation. The report also includes appendixes. Show Less -

Successive policies of the Government of Vietnam for economic reform and modernization have helped Vietnam to emerge as one of the world's fastest growing economies.... Show More + The report provides continued recommendations on improving land policies to ensure efficiency of their practical implementation and to target at both economic development and social sustainability. Policies with regard to voluntary benefits sharing, promoting the participation of communities and social organizations, strengthening the dialogue between the government and the people, creating real consensus across parties related to investment projects, enhancing inspection works by upper level administrative authorities over their lower level ones are analyzed and specifically recommended in this policy note. The policy note includes six chapters: chapter one, is the general introduction of this document; chapter two, focuses on analyzing the prevailing land legislation system for land conversion and the process of land legislation construction to determine its insufficiency issues; chapter three, mainly analyzes the practical implementation of land conversion in Vietnam, based on the analyses of opinions from provincial leaders, investors and affected people; chapter four, carries out analyses of the international and domestic experiences on land acquisition/conversion measures to find the possibilities of application to Vietnam; and chapter five, suggests land policies, legal regulations, and implementation procedures to continuously reform the land acquisition/conversion measures in Vietnam. The policy note ends with the last chapter, which recommends some issues for further studies in the World Bank Vietnam study program on land policies improvement in the upcoming years. Show Less -

This report directly provide recommendations for improvement of the quality of the regional master socio-econsomic development plan and national laud use plans for Vietnam,... Show More + to the year 2020. It provides analysis and assessment of the reviewed-adjusted-ammended socio-economic development plan for the Mekong Delta, which is aimed at improvement of the quality and feasibility of regional socio-economic development plans for the industrialization, modernization and integration of Vietnam into the global economic market. Land and water resources were evaluated, case studies were compiled on export commodity production models with consideration of the potential as commodities. Show Less -

The policy reforms called for in the transition from a socialist command economy to a developing market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a country's citizens.... Show More + In poor economies, the initial focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving many rural households out of farming into more remunerative (urban and rural) non-farm activities. Reforms that shift the rural economy from the relatively rigid, control-based farming institutions found under socialist agriculture to a more flexible, market-based model in which production incentives are strong can thus play an important role in the process of economic growth. However, such reforms present a major challenge to policy makers, who are concerned that they will generate socially unacceptable inequalities in land and other dimensions relevant to people's living standards. This book studies how the changes in land institutions and land allocation required for Vietnam's agrarian transition affected people's living standards-notably that of the country's rural poor. Living standards means household command over commodities, as measured by consumption Show Less -