Viet Nam: Economic Empowerment of Ethnic Minority Peoples Project in Dak Nong

	IFAD Photo by Lou Dematteis Viet Nam-Ha Giang Development Project for Ethnic Minorities A Hmong girl at the Yen Minh market. Ethnic minorities come to the market from surrounding areas to buy, sell, eat and socialize.

Project area. The project will cover 117 poor communes in 16 districts of three provinces: five districts in the province of Tuyen Quang, five districts in Gia Lai and six districts in Ninh Thuan.

Target group. The targeted group in the three provinces is constituted by poor households and ethnic minority households (including both the poor and the near-poor). Increasing the market awareness and skills of poor people, women and ethnic minority households is a specific objective of the project.

Project objectives. The project’s overarching goal is to raise the quality of life for rural people, especially those living in the most disadvantaged areas (as described in Tam Nong). The development objective is to secure the sustained and lucrative economic participation of 73,800 ethnic minority and rural poor households living in Tuyen Quang, Gia Lai and Ninh Thuan provinces.

Project description. The project has three components:

• Institutional strengthening for the implementation of pro-poor initiatives under Tam Nong. Addressing institutional capacity will be a key pillar of the project. Through this component, the project will assist the provinces in implementing the following institutional reform agenda: (i) institutionalization of market-oriented, results-based, participatory socio-economic development planning through an implementation process that starts from in the village and commune and extends to the district and province levels, integrating the appropriate resources and incorporating gender and climate change issues; (ii) private-sector inclusion in decision-making and service provision through modification of the Government's policies and provincial guidelines for private-sector development; and (iii) application of new mechanisms to improve coordination among farmers, government agencies, agriculture service systems, research institutes and especially with private enterprises and traders.

• Promotion of pro-poor value chains. This component will focus on: (i) identification and prioritization of a portfolio of pro-poor value chains in which poor and near poor households can profitably participate in the project areas; (ii) capacity-building and effective provision of value-chain-related technical and extension services by both public- and private-sector service providers to support pro-poor value chains; and (iii) increased access to financing for the  private sector to participate in the pro-poor value chains and for rural poor households.

• Commune market-oriented  socio-economic development planning and implementation. This component will seek to: (i) build the capacities of communes and villages to enable them to identify and prioritize their problems and the opportunities associated with expanding their access to markets in ways that ensure the participation of poor households and ethnic minorities; and (ii) support the decentralization of pro-poor socio-economic development planning to the village level so that proposals for investment are channelled through Government planning processes. In order to facilitate this capacity-building, a significant amount of resources will be made available by the project to be used in the development plans that are formulated by communes and villages.

		IFAD Photo by Lou Dematteis Viet Nam-Ha Giang Development Project for Ethnic Minorities Hmong y farmers buy and sell livestock at the Yen Minh market.

Important features. The Tam Nong Support Project will assist in establishing the policy framework and institutional arrangements and in developing the capacities and approaches necessary for the implementation of the Government of Viet Nam’s new rural development policy, known as Tam Nong or Resolution 26 on Agriculture, Farmers and Rural Areas. As part of the efforts to enhance the implementation of the Government’s policy and programmes, the project will support the selected provinces in carrying out much-needed pro-poor institutional reforms, such as more decentralized, grass-roots, bottom-up and participatory approaches to agricultural development and wider engagement of the private sector. Innovations promoted by the project include engagement of private-sector actors as stakeholders in the rural development process, adoption of a pro-poor value chain approach by the Government, and differentiated strategies for “pre-market” and “market-ready” communes.

Cofinanciers and domestic contribution.  No cofinancier is envisaged. The Government will provide US$10.86 million and the beneficiaries US$6.14 million.