TUOITRENEWS
Vietnam’s central bank and Asian Development Bank have reached a $1.38 billion lending deal to enhance nationwide clean water access, conserve threatened forests, and ease urban gridlock.
The loan agreement has been signed by State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Giau and Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda in Hanoi. Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung witnessed the signing ceremony.
“ADB’s assistance will help ensure that more people in Vietnam have access to clean water, more livable cities, and biologically diverse forests that will be preserved for future generations,” said Kuroda.
In many of Vietnam’s largest cities, 30 percent to 40 percent of treated water is lost before it reaches the end user. Moreover, four in every ten families have no connection to a central water supply system.
A $1 billion financial support facility from ADB will help improve clean water access for 3 million families in Vietnam’s cities, including half a million poor households who will receive their own piped water connection for the first time. The assistance is part of a larger $2.8 billion investment program.
With Vietnam’s forests coming under increasing pressure from rapid economic development and climate change, habitat restoration is needed not only to protect the country’s environmental treasures, but also to safeguard the livelihoods of indigenous communities.
A $30 million loan from ADB’s concessional Asian Development Fund will enhance cross-border cooperation in protecting a contiguous stretch of biodiversity-rich forest in Vietnam’s Central Annamites, which spans the highlands of Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue and Quang Nam Provinces.
This is part of a larger program that is also supporting the preservation of key forestlands in Cambodia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
The assistance package for Vietnam includes approximately $8 million to improve clean water and sanitation services and upgrade market roads in the 34 largely ethnic minority communes in the project area.
“Sustainable economic development and environmental preservation are intertwined,” said Mr. Kuroda. “In the long term, coupling conservation and livelihood improvements will help ensure that Vietnam’s forests and their biodiversity are managed well.”
The third component of the assistance is a $350 million loan, which is the first tranche of an overall $636 million ADB package. This package is supporting a $1.6 billion project to construct a modern expressway to the south of congested Ho Chi Minh City.
With the city’s population expected to swell by more than 50 percent by 2025, new roads are needed to complement other modes of transportation, including an ADB-supported metro rail system, to ensure the efficient transportation of goods and people.
The 57-kilometer expressway between Ben Luc and Long Thanh will reduce traffic in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City by allowing vehicles traveling from east to west to bypass the city center.
When the full expressway opens in 2017, it will reduce east-west travel time by 80 percent and cut the number of traffic accidents by 10 percent.
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