Vietnam needs to pay attention to levels of priority and focus on a specific area for a more effective use of official development assistance (ODA) capital, JICA Chief Representative in Vietnam Tsuno Motonori has said.

Talking with a Vietnam News Agency reporter on the sidelines of the Consultative Group (CG) Meeting in Hanoi on Dec. 6, Tsuno Motoroni said Vietnam has become a middle-income country, but Japan wants to further support and cooperate with Vietnam to help it reach a higher level of development.

In his opinion, to enhance economic restructuring and poverty reduction, Vietnam needs to further strengthen fiscal year discipline and speed up the reform of administrative procedures and tax policies.

Besides, macro economic stabilisation and economic restructuring have to be attached to sustainable development and ensuring social security, said the JICA chief in Vietnam .

Talking about the country’s reactions and policies over the past time, UN Resident Coordinator in Vietnam , Pratibha Mehta, said Vietnam has taken good measures to counter difficulties in 2011, including high inflation. Besides, the government has made right decisions in restructuring the macro economy which received support of international community.

She recommended that the government should take more drastic actions and greater efforts to restructure the economy and stabilise the macro economy while avoiding cutting back on investment in social services and social protection, she said.

She also spoke highly of Vietnam ’s achievements in economic growth, especially in poverty reduction, adding that international community believes that Vietnam will continue to achieve even better results.

However, the UN chief said Vietnam needs to maintain these activities so that the country both records economic growth and eliminate the imbalance between economic growth and social services and social protection, she said.

The UN representative said Vietnam has achieved remarkable progresses and become a middle-income country, as a result, assistance outside ODA is expected to focus more on reforms in policies and social development services in order to have more positive impacts on social services and social protection as well as disadvantaged groups and ethnic people in remote and mountainous areas.

For his part, Deputy Planning and Investment Minister Cao Viet Sinh said in 2011, donors’ assistance to Vietnam has been used effectively with a remarkable increase in ODA capital disbursement rate compared to the previous years, marking the highest level so far.

He said 2012 will be a year of ODA disbursement and the government and the group of six banks of donors are determined to intensify the activity.

The deputy minister added that ODA will be the catalyst to get the private sector involve in infrastructure building in order to increase the effective use of ODA./.