HUNGARIAN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION (ODA) PROGRAMME IN VIETNAM

Vietnam is Hungary’s development cooperation partner. It is a reference country for the European Union’s (EU) development activities regarding policy harmonisation and implementation, and is also a pilot country for the “One-UN” initiative.

In line with Vietnam’s special status, a bilateral ODA (official development assistance) agreement was signed in 2005, during the Hungarian Prime Minister’s visit to Hanoi. An ODA  country strategy for Vietnam (CSP) was drafted for 2008-2010. The CSP sets joint goals to ensure, that corresponding to the interests and needs of Vietnam our ODA  projects bring added value in the most suitable form (such as capacity building in institutions of the market economy, and in the areas of international economic integration, as well as agriculture, food security).

The Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Planning and Investment of Vietnam signed a Memorandum of Understanding on ODA cooperation in March 2008 in Hanoi. The MoU defines specific areas of cooperation, such as banking and finance, monetary management, statistics.  The Hungarian side would share experiences relating to market economy transition, to support organisational and economic reforms. The protocol also stipulates the means of cooperation: exchange of experts, study trips to Hungary, training, and ‘twinning links’ between relevant organisations. Vietnam’s prioritised agencies are the State Audit Office of Vietnam, the General Statistics Office, the State Bank of Vietnam and the Ministry of Finance. Following preparatory discussions, yearly workplans should be approved, and the implementation supervised by the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Major programmes in 2009-early 2010:

Statistical Offices: Hungarian experts gave lectures to middle-level GSO officials on the management and quality control of the statistical system.
(The Hungarian Statistical Office supports the organization of a database for trade in services in the framework of the European Commission’s MUTRAP III project by training of Vietnamese experts.)

The cooperation between the two countries’ State Audit Offices is one of the best in the ODA programme. At the request of the Vietnamese partners, two Hungarian State Audit experts held a 13-day training course for 20 Vietnamese auditors in Hanoi in March. The course focused on auditing the planning of the government budget, which is more and more important as the Vietnamese National Assembly starts strengthening its supervision of the state budget planning process.
February 2010 a six-member delegation of the State Audit of Vietnam visited the SA of Hungary for a study program on the audit of the government budget plans.

Late June, an 8-member delegation from the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance visited Hungary to study monetary market management with major emphasis on supervision, foreign exchange, stock market regulations, etc.

January 2010 an advisor of the Hungarian National Bank gave a presentation at an ADB-State Bank of Vietnam Seminar for SBV experts on monetary policy and exchange rate mechanisms.

Trilateral projects
In 2007, in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho, Hungary organised a tri-partite cooperation event: a conference on sustainable farming with the participation of Vietnam and Japan.

A Hungary-Vietnam-Thailand professional tourism industry training project was also implemented.

Late 2008 in Hanoi, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore,  a training course was held on public financial management. The attending 20 Vietnamese trainees were officers of Vietnamese governmental institutions.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, in charge of coordinating development cooperation programmes, assessed that the orientation of the Hungary-Vietnam ODA Programme is useful and requests similar programmes on macroeconomics, educational management and human resources training in the health sector.

New ODA tool: Small-size projects (microsupport)

Upon Embassy requests, modest, small-scale support tool (less than 20,000 EUR) was introduced to assist local projects, which meet both criteria: be in line with the recipient country’s socio-economic targets and increase the visibility of Hungary. By implementing these projects, embassies can accumulate experiences for the whole project cycle.

In 2008-2009, three small-sized projects were carried out in Vietnam. The first studied the feasibility of building fish feed plants in Vietnam and Cambodia. The first such feed mill was built with funding from the Hungarian International Development Cooperation (ODA) Programme at the Research Institute of Agriculture in Cai Be in 2007 (more on this below).

The second project helped to create an activity area for disabled children at the Hanoi Hope Center’s new premises.
The third project was designed to expand the breeding of Hungarian-origin poultry (turkey, guinea-fowl) in Southern Vietnam, with collaboration between the Thuy Phuong Poultry Research Centre and the Godollo Research Institute for Animal Breeding and Nutrition.

The implementation of another small-sized project began April 2010: “Model power plant using local wood species with special regard to sustainable forest management and job creation at remote areas.” The executive agencies are the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam and the research institutions of the Sopron West Hungarian University.

We would like to present more details about a program, which was implemented in Cai Be. The project was launched under the title “Development of seed and feed supply for economically important freshwater species cultured by small scale farmers in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.”

The main objective was to improve the  living conditions of poor farmers in the Mekong Delta by developing aquaculture. Fish and shrimp breeding plays an important role in the local residents’ livelihood, however, the development of aquaculture is hindered as the region faces shortages of both aquatic varieties and feed supply. Therefore, the project was expected to help resolve the problem by improving the supply of aquatic varieties and feed.

Hungary contributed up to 79 million forints to the project, which is equivalent to 72% of the total investment. Vietnamese help was an important component in local installation and assembly of the production lines for the fish feed plant. The plant’s output ranges between 0.5 and 2.5 tonnes per hour, depending on kinds and sizes of feed tables. Equipped with computer-controlled production lines, the factory is capable of producing high-quality environmentally friendly feed from agricultural by-products (For example: bran and broken rice), thereby reducing the prices of feed.

In addition to aquatic feed, the plant is also able to produce animal feed, ensure R+D conditions to test new feed processing methods (taking full use of agricultural by-products), and play the role of a model plant.

Humanitarian and charity activities

Hungary’s humanitarian and charity activities in Vietnam have also seen significant and positive changes as Hungarian organisations joined EU-funded programmes in the country.

Most recently, a number of volunteers from Hungarian and Italian non-governmental organizations (NGO) participated in a DG EuropeAid-funded project to assist children with disabilities in the Red River province of Bac Giang during the second half of 2009.

The project is designed to help local disabled children to integrate into society and assist their families escape from poverty. The project was implemented with the cooperation of the Bologna-based Gruppo di Volontariato Civile (GVC) of Italy, and Hungarian Baptist Aid.

The objectives of the project are to:
1) Build and provide equipment for seven centres for disabled children in Bac Giang province in order to improve the quality of their of lives.
2) Transfer the highly efficient rehabilitation method: FLAME – Function, Language, Movement Education - based on the Peto method, and apply with community-based rehabilitation (CBR).
3) Train health wokers and social activists in the locality.
4) Ensure parents of the disabled children can get stable jobs, thus increasing incomes of their families.
5) Improve the awareness of the whole community, and local authorities to create favourable conditions for children with disabilities to integrate into society.

The targets: 693 children with serious disabilities attend FLAME courses; 1339 family members of the children participate in CBR courses; 120 health workers and social partners join both FLAME and CBR training. Total: 2032 people.

Hungary’s charity organizations also increased their presence in relief activities. On January 10, 2010, the Hungarian Malta Charity Fund handed over medicines worth 1.5 million forints to support victims of the typhoons, which devastated the Central Region of Vietnam in late 2009. The donations were raised by the Malta Charity Fund in collaboration with local partners and support from the Hungarian Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

The Vice Managing Chairman of the Malta Chairty Fund said his organization was planning to expand its operations in Vietnam. The Hungarian Embassy in Vietnam hosted meetings with local NGOs to help accelerate the process.