In 1993, only 30 percent of the Vietnamese population lived within two kilometers of an all-weather road. In 1999, the World Bank identified a massive effort to restore the country’s rural road network to adequate standards as critical to its development.
Second Rural Transport Project to:
- provide lowest cost, basic road access to all communes and rehabilitate other district and commune roads in 40 project provinces;
- build the capacity of provinces, districts and local communes to plan and implement rural road maintenance for the long term;
- train private contractors;
- help the Ministry of Transport formulate and implement rural transport policies.
Improved access to all-weather roads for approximately 16 million rural people -- 950,000 of whom were poor. Some 210,000 people lifted out of poverty.
Highlights:
- Rehabilitation of 7,600 kilometers of roads and 26 kilometers of bridges; 70 percent increase in usage between 2002 and 2004 with 12 percent drop in travel time.
- Evidence of increase in health visits, higher school attendance and greater access to local government.
- Development of the fledgling private sector by ensuring access to the rural road construction market where State provision was, until recently, the norm. Participation of small private contractors increased from 35 percent of contracts awarded in the first year to 100 percent in the final year.
- Technical assistance has helped increase the effectiveness of public spending in the transport sector and assisted the government to make the best use of the US$3 billion of investment expected in the sector over the next five years.
- US$103 million in financing out of US$145 million project cost.
- Combined technical expertise and large-scale support enabled the Government of Vietnam to realize the poverty reduction impacts that rural roads can provide.
- Unique ability to manage the large number of contracts (over 2,000) necessary to have an impact in the sector.
The World Bank is moving away from project support for financing rural roads to approaches that support broader government programs and policy reform. The next phase of support will focus on the national and provincial program using government systems as much as possible. Consequently, provinces that have proved capable of managing their rural transport programs efficiently and transparently are rewarded with full decentralized authority. Those that have not reached this stage are provided additional technical assistance to develop the capacity to manage their investments. This approach includes incentives for performance and increased post-implementation reviews to ensure that procurement is carried out transparently.
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