The Japanese Fund for Poverty Reduction, through the Asian Development bank, has promised to grand 1.5 million USD to help Vietnam pay for forestry environmental services during the 2014-16 period.

The Vietnamese Government also contributed 150,000 USD to the technical assistance project which will help work out the criteria for economic evaluation of environment services at provincial level as well as the procedures for pilot programmes and the payments for forestry environmental services.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding on July 29, Deputy General Director of Vietnam’s Forestry Administration at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Vo Dai Hai said that Vietnam introduced a policy on payments for forestry services in 2008 and had collected 1 trillion VND (47.6 million USD) annually from these services.

However, it still faced with problems in carrying out the policies because of poor communications, inadequate staff and not enough individuals being allocated to forestry protection.

ADB Country Director Tomoyuki Kimura said that the bank will continue to promote green growth in Vietnam including improving payments for forestry services. In 2010, Vietnam introduced new regulations on payments for forestry environmental services, which took effect in 2011.-VNA