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Five million euros for flood protection in the Mekong Delta cities

The Swiss Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs (SECO) will finance 5 million euros to help prevent floods in three Mekong Delta cities including An Giang, Kien Giang and Ca Mau in the 2017-2019 period.

In addition to this aid, in order to implement this program, the Vietnamese side must provide a counterpart fund of around 500,000 euros from the central and local budget of three provinces participating in the project. Thus, the total capital to implement the project is about 5.5 million euros.

The program is implemented with three main components. Component 1 is integrated urban drainage planning. This component will support the development of regulations to address waterlogging, climate change and integrate flood risk management into urban planning and local implementation plans; Component 2 is flood risk analysis and planning assistance. This component will support modeling, flooding risk assessment, review and adjustment of existing urban planning. Component 3 is disaster risk management, which will support the establishment of early flood warning system, water level measurement to collect, analyze and evaluate information, and update urban flood control plans.

Before deciding to select An Giang, Kien Giang and Ca Mau to carry out the project, experts from German agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), Department of Technical Infrastructure and SECO had conducted preliminary analysisin 13 provinces in the Mekong Delta on indicators such as urban level, population, poor household rate, drainage situation, flooding, current drainage planning as well as impacts of climate change and level of financial support in the field of flood management. The analysis shows that the implementation of the above-mentioned program is necessary to help localities review the status of the drainage system as well as work out measures to cope with the increasing flooding as today.

It is known that from 2013 to 2017, this program has been implemented in five localities nationwide, including Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa, Quang Ngai and Soc Trang, with funding from the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Federal Development. Khanh Anh