The CPRGS marked an important first attempt to modernize the process and substance of strategic planning in Vietnam and led to experimentation with new approaches and the tackling of sensitive issues.  

The CPRGS was innovative in its move towards planning for development outcomes, as opposed to the previous focus on inputs (under the form of production or investment targets). The new outcome orientation forced a deeper analysis of the impact of Government policies, involving extensive use of empirical evidence and increased consultation with key stakeholders. In a break with past practice, consultations with poor communities and local officials in six sites around Vietnam were held while the document was being drafted. This provided valuable insights into what could work effectively for poor communities and influenced the final document. It also led to the development of a set of indicators to monitor and evaluate progress, including the localized version of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These Vietnam Development Goals (VDGs) were more ambitious than the MDGs in a number of respects. Three progress reports describe the progress made annually and were distributed to the Boards of the World Bank and the IMF.

The CPRGS was approved in May 2002, and covered a three-year period.  A few months later, in October 2002, government officials, donors and NGOs met over three days in Haiphong to discuss the sequence of policy actions necessary to attain the CPRGS objectives.  This exercise, jointly with subsequent analytical work by the World Bank and ADB towards the Vietnam Development Report 2003, laid the foundations for a series of direct budget support operations.  Initially, several donors remained cautious about supporting a strategy that was not part of the established planning architecture and there was much discussion about what could constitute “alignment” in practice.  Nevertheless, since June 2003 an increasingly large number of donors channel resources to the government on annual basis, in recognition of the progress made in the implementation of the CPRGS agenda.  The allocation of those resources was to be decided by government and their spending to be processed through Vietnamese procedures.  Considerable progress in public financial management over the previous years had made this approach workable.  But the triggers to proceed with the following operation in the cycle were related to the adoption of the key policy measures to deliver on the CPRGS promise. The last budget support operation in the cycle, approved in June of 2006, involved 19 donors in its preparation and was co-financed by a dozen of them.  At that point it was clear that CPRGS had been a very important stepping stone, not only in relation to planning processes in Vietnam, but also in relation to the design of ODA to Vietnam.

One shortcoming of the CPRGS was the difficulty to convey its approach and messages to authorities at local levels. With the progress made in decentralization in Vietnam, almost half of public expenditures are allocated by government officials in provinces, districts and communes. The ability to keep development inclusive, depends crucially on the capacity of local governments to embrace strategic planning, leading to sound policy choices, supported by commensurate budget allocations, and monitored through an appropriate set of provincial-level development indicators. But few local officials knew about CPRGS or considered that it had any direct implications for their daily work. This was a consequence of CPRGS being located outside the normal planning processes of Vietnam. To redress this shortcoming, an initiative to rollout the CPRGS approachto the provinces was launched. Guidelines for this effort were issued by MPI in April 2004. Over time, about two dozen provincial governments experimented with the preparation of strategic plans. Their efforts were supported by donors in a decentralized fashion, each local government choosing its own approach to bring together the various departments involved and come up with a renovated provincial plan. The experience has been diverse, if measured in terms of success on ground, but certainly rich in terms of learning.

The CPRGS, though approved by the Prime Minister, was not a traditional part of mainstream planning processes. It coexisted with a five-year Socioeconomic Development Plan (SEDP) 2001-2005, which was discussed by the Party Congress and approved by the National Assembly. However, the process of formulating, implementing and monitoring the progress of the CPRGS has initiated permanent changes in the approaches to socioeconomic planning. Directive 33 was issued by the Prime Minister in September 2004, stating that the SEDP 2006-2010( English | Vietnamese) would be drafted according to the same principles that had governed the preparation of the CPRGS. This has resulted in a document that is better linked to budgets and that is more poverty-focused and results-oriented than previous SEDPs, reflecting best practice. The SEDP 2006-2010 was discussed by the Boards of the IMF and IDA for discussion as the Government’s second Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), along with an advisory note written by the staff of the World Bank and the IMF.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment(MPI) was responsible for drafting the SEDP 2006-2010 and leading the consultation activities. The draft SEDP was declassified for the first time ever and the drafting process was characterized by serious efforts to consult with different groups of Vietnamese society on the content of the draft. In addition to internal discussions within Government, MPI organized consultation workshops with local officials, groups of academics, the domestic business sector, international and local non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), people living with disabilities, overseas Vietnamese, women and women’s groups, and donors. In addition, MPI collaborated with local researchers and international NGOs to gather feedback from poor communities in participatory research exercises in 17 sites across the country. The consultations played an important role in shaping the final SEDP 2006-2010 in a number of important respects. As an example, the more mainstreamed approach to poverty reduction, which goes beyond targeted assistance to tackle budget allocation norms and sectoral priorities, is a direct product of the consultation process. Ongoing work preparing a Law on Planning and a manual on planning in a market economy indicates that this move to a more open and consultative planning style will be a permanent change that is reflected in official guidance to planners.

The draft SEDP 2006-2010 was discussed by the National Assembly in November 2005. This allowed the incorporation of the views of National Assembly members prior to submission to the Party Congress in April 2006, thereby according the National Assembly more influence over the content of the document than previously. There was also a second round of consultations within Government and with donors and NGOs following the first discussion at the National Assembly. The National Assembly approved the SEDP in June 2006.

The SEDP 2006-2010 looks both backwards, to the experience of implementing the previous SEDP, and forwards, to the actions the Government should take over the next five years to reach the goals of the Socioeconomic Development Strategy 2001-2010. These actions fall broadly into four main areas: (a) the promotion of growth and transition to a market economy; (b) reducing poverty and ensuring social inclusion; (c) managing the environment and natural resources in a sustainable manner; and, (d) building institutions that can support the strategy. Taken together, the Government believes that this plan can pave the way for Vietnam to become a middle-income country by the end of the period. The reform agenda outlined by the SEDP is extremely comprehensive. In preparation for aligning development assistance to the SEDP, development partners in Vietnam have recently collaborated to provide an analysis of some of the priority areas for action. The  Vietnam Development Report 2007 - Aiming High, represents an attempt to identify the most important policy measures to undertake in the coming years, so as to align donor support behind them. The report recognizes that moving across all four pillars of the SEDP is a formidable challenge, requiring stronger coordination, so that in the end result is more, not less, than the sum of the parts. In the spirit of harmonization, the report emphasizes the importance of a strong coordination mechanism for the implementation of the SEDP, cutting across all four pillars of Vietnam’s reform agenda, and making the most of the donors’ support to it.