Technical Assistance to the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy
The assignment was financed through the ‘Chia Se’ programme that consists of four components – three provincial projects in Ha Giang, Yen Bai, and Quang Tri provinces and a national one, which together support poverty alleviation and poverty-focused national policy making. Besides its focus on poverty alleviation, Chia Se supports decentralisation under the Vietnamese Government's ‘Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy’ and the 5-Year Development Plan, ensuring that vulnerable and disadvantaged groups can participate fully in Vietnams rapidly reforming and developing society. On a national level, special support was given to the integration of the CPRGS into the current 5-year planning cycles.
The advisors supported the Ministry for Planning and Investment, MPI, and the Inter-ministerial Working Group established for; examining and disseminating studies and evaluations undertaken by GoV agencies, provinces and other organisations in the field; assisting government agencies and ministries in designing studies of the effectiveness of government policies to reduce poverty; feeding back the findings of monitoring and evaluation studies to provinces and other government agencies.
Another facility that will serve the purpose of monitoring the progress of poverty reduction is a Research Fund set up by Sida and MPI as part of the Chia Se. The Fund is managed by MPI with the help of the CPRGS Secretariat, and the projects to be funded will be vetted by a Research Board, with participation from Vietnamese academic institutions and approved by an inter-ministerial working group.
The CPRGS Advisors were contracted to help MPI use the Fund to build a link between the administration and the academic community and should more specifically; assist MPI in attracting proposals for high-quality research on poverty reduction, decentralisation and popular involvement in decision-making; prepare research proposals for approval by the scientific and administrative bodies that will be authorised to take decisions on the use of the funds; take an active part in disseminating the findings of the studies to all interested parties in government, as well as among NGOs.