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Viet Nam

Economic success in Vietnam allows WFP to close doors

ROME - The United Nations World Food Programme is ending its assistance operations in Vietnam after 25 years that have seen the economic and social transformation of this Southeast Asian country.
WFP will close its doors on 31 December following a careful assessment of food needs in the country, which today stands as the second-largest rice exporter in the world. Additionally, Vietnam's sturdy economic growth has attracted foreign aid at record levels.

"Vietnam has now reached a level of national food security where we at WFP are confident we can close our programme here and devote our food aid to people who are in greater need," said Vietnam Country Director Julian Lefevre. "Vietnam can feed its people. But there are far too many other nations that cannot, and it is those that we need to help."

WFP, the world's largest food aid agency, played a major role in Vietnam's protracted post-war rehabilitation, feeding tens of millions of people. The agency has been Vietnam's largest grant donor of the entire UN system, investing approximately $500 million of food and non-food aid in the country between 1974 and 2000.

WFP food aid helped people survive during times of severe food deficits, particularly between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, when collective farming policies led to radical crop shortfalls. The agency has also left an enduring legacy in Vietnam as a result of its many development projects. Work crews paid by WFP food, for example, re-built some 800 kilometres of sea and estuary dykes in central and northern Vietnam as protection for the people against typhoons. The dykes cover about one-third of the Vietnamese northern and central coastline that is vulnerable to these destructive tropical storms.

WFP food aid was used in the same way to plant 1.1 billion trees ? a vital resource in a country that has only an estimated 23 percent forest cover of its 33 million hectares of land.

In addition, WFP developed, using local ingredients, two types of highly nutritious blended food for malnourished children. The blended foods have contributed to a significant decline in the rates of infant malnutrition over the last 15 years.

WFP is handing over responsibility for the development programmes to the Vietnamese government, which has agreed to continue these operations. WFP is gratified that the government has recognised the value of WFP's work and will ensure that the benefits will continue to accrue to the people.

In total, over the last 25 years, WFP undertook 27 emergency operations (including the current one for the Mekong delta floods earlier this year), four rehabilitation and 22 development projects in Vietnam. WFP's assistance was crucial in the years immediately after the war, when some donors were reluctant to support Vietnam. That pattern changed in the early 1990s, as donors were encouraged by the country's demonstrated success in implementing new economic policies. Today, Vietnam enjoys strong support from the overseas development assistance community.

Vietnam is one of 23 countries to "graduate" from WFP over the past five years ? to achieve the food security and economic progress that enable WFP to close its office there. In the case of Vietnam, the return to food self-sufficiency and productivity results from a fundamental change of policy direction in the late 1980s. The achievements are reflected in a string of remarkable statistics:

  • Vietnam has progressed from being a significant importer of rice in the early 1980s to the world's second-largest rice exporter.
  • Poverty has been reduced from more than 70 percent in the mid-1980s to about 37 percent in 2000.
  • Average per capita income has more than doubled over the same period.
  • Infant mortality has declined from 50 per 1,000 live births to 37 per 1,000 live births.
  • Per capita food availability has increased from 190 kilograms/annum in 1988 to over 400 kilograms/annum in 1999.
  • The incidence of underweight children under five years of age has fallen steadily, from 50.3 percent in 1993 to 33 percent in 2000.

WFP will continue to monitor the food security, disaster preparedness and emergency situation in Vietnam, and stands ready to assist Vietnam with future emergency food aid needs if the need arises. WFP also expects to continue purchasing significant quantities of rice in Vietnam for its global operations.

WFP is the United Nations' front-line agency in the fight against global hunger. In 1999, WFP fed more than 89 million people in 82 countries including most of the word's refugees and internally displaced people.

For more information contact:

Julian Lefevre
WFP Country Director/Vietnam
Tel: + 84-4-8463896

Christiane Berthiaume
WFP Information Officer/Geneva
Tel: +41-22-9178564

Abigail Spring
WFP Information Officer/New York
Tel +1-212-9635196