President receives WB Vice President for East Asia and Pacific

State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and WB Regional Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific Victoria Kwakwa (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc hosted a reception in Hanoi on June 29 for World Bank (WB) Regional Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific Victoria Kwakwa who is on a working trip to Vietnam.

Hailing Kwakwa for her dedication to promoting effective cooperation programmes between WB and Vietnam, Phuc affirmed that the Vietnamese State and people always highly value her efforts and contributions in the field.

The WB has assisted Vietnam not only in poverty reduction but also in the building of mechanisms and strategic infrastructure framework over the past years, thus helping Vietnam make breakthrough strides, which have been welcomed by the WB and international organisations, he said.

Phuc thanked the WB for supporting Vietnam’s bid to delay the payment of International Development Association’s loans in order to have more resources for the fight against COVID-19 and for economic development. He also lauded the WB’s initiatives to assist countries in the COVID-19 fight, including Vietnam.

Kwakwa, for her part, congratulated Vietnam on curbing the COVID-19 spread. At the same time, the country also harmoniously combined fiscal and monetary policies to generate strong economic growth, becoming one of a few nations with positive growth in the region and achievements in export.

Underlining the importance of vaccinations, she also committed all possible support to Vietnam to buy vaccines and offer health care to its people.

About Vietnam’s socio-economic development orientations, Kwakwa said Vietnam has devised a relatively complete development policy framework, especially regarding the development of key economic zones, digital transformation, inclusive development, climate change response and green growth, which are strategic infrastructure for Vietnam to become an upper middle-income country by 2045.

The guest also spoke highly of Vietnam’s efforts to realise the climate change response strategy in the Mekong Delta and reduce greenhouse carbon emissions. She suggested Vietnam pay more attention to reducing coal-fired power development and switching to cleaner and greener energy production.

The host wished that the WB would continue assisting Vietnam in fulfilling development goals till 2035 and 2045, as well as addressing post-pandemic poverty relapse in countries, including Vietnam.

Phuc discussed with the WB official measures to fix shortcomings in building projects and disbursing official development assistance (ODA) in Vietnam, and proposed Kwakwa seek more ODA to Vietnam in the time to come./.