The Government of Vietnam (GoV) gives significant attention to leading partnerships with other stakeholders, especially with external partners. 

The regular Consultative Group (CG) meetings that the GoV co-chairs with the World Bank, attended by external donors and increasingly by private sector and civil society representatives, have served as a vehicle for addressing partnership issues. Since 1999, the annual CGs have been held in Vietnam; more informal midyear CGs have also been held in-country since 1998.

Moving Closer to Clients and Partners

Since 1997, the World Bank has undergone a major program of decentralization to Vietnam, with authority and decision-making relocated from Washington, D.C. to the Vietnam Country Office in Hanoi. The majority of World Bank projects in Vietnam are now managed from Hanoi, which is also where the Country Director is based. Prior to this move, the East Asia and Pacific Region had three Country Directors in its Washington Headquarters who were responsible for a total of 21 countries comprising the region. Today there are field-based Country Directors in China, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Country Directors are represented and supported by Headquarters-based counterparts called "Country Program Coordinators."

To be more responsive to client countries, the Bank has reduced the number of management layers from three to two and has given more authority to the Country Directors based in their respective countries. For example, the Hanoi-based Vietnam Country Director is responsible for developing and implementing the Bank's country development strategy and controls the annual budget for the country program. Together with a strengthened economic and sectoral team, the World Bank in Vietnam is able to respond quickly and efficiently to Vietnam's needs.

Partners 
 
The World Bank Vietnam is actively engaged in partnerships which span from the private sector to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Examples of such engagement include co- operative work in the various Partnership Groups, bilateral donor co-financing in a range of World Bank funded projects; joint Analytical and Advisory work (for example the Vietnam Development Report 2001 was a joint report of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme), and work with NGOs, for example with Oxfam GB, Save the Children UK, Plan, Catholic Relief Services and ActionAid to carry out village-level consultations for the Government’s Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). We are always seeking to develop and deepen partnerships for development in Vietnam. 

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Reaching out to civil society

Community involvement in planning and implementing development projects is the key to project sustainability. Many Bank-funded projects incorporate community participation components and social assessments. These make good use of Vietnam's extensive and well-organized outreach channels to local levels, a tradition of decentralized policy implementation and 'bottom-up' identification and planning. In a growing number of cases, systematic workshops with the government, NGOs, and academics are used at various levels during Bank project preparation. The Community Based Rural Infrastructure Project and the Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project are recent examples of World Bank-funded projects that have substantial community involvement and participation. Both of these projects work in areas of great rural poverty with a high proportion of ethnic minorities.

The Consultative Group (CG) Meetings for Vietnam bring together participants from the Government of Vietnam and representatives of about 50 bilateral and multilateral donors to Vietnam. Vietnamese and International NGOs and representatives of the Vietnam Business Forum participate as observers. Consultative Group meetings provide a forum for discussions between the Government of Vietnam and its development partners on economic policy issues, strategies for reducing poverty, and ODA effectiveness.

The full CG meets every year, usually in December. Since 1999 these meetings have been held in Vietnam and it is intended that all future meetings will be held in-country. In addition to full CG meetings, since 1998 informal mid-year CG meetings have been held in Vietnam, usually in May or June of each year.

The Government delegation includes senior representatives from key ministries and governmental bodies, including the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Ministry of Finance, and the State Bank of Vietnam. The Consultative Group for Vietnam is co-chaired by the Minister of Planning and Investment and the Country Director of the World Bank in Vietnam.