Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen The Phuong has underscored the pivotal role of green growth in fulfilling other development goals, enhancing quality of growth, avoiding the middle income–classified nation trap and ensuring a sustainable environment and ecosystems.

The planning and investment official highlighted his concerns at a seminar in Hanoi on July 12 to kick-start a project to provide assistance for implementing a master plan on developing Vietnam’s green growth strategy.

The main part of the project funded by the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) aims at working out green growth development strategies at provincial levels, enhancing working capacity as well as policy assessment during the process of implementation.

The project is being jointly carried out by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and other relevant agencies. It is rated as an approach to restructure the country’s economic and growth models to make them more efficient and use natural resources to raise competitiveness, creating more jobs and improving people’s living standards, while providing a helpful hand in dealing with climate change and green house emissions.

At the event, a representative from the World Bank suggested that Vietnam should design a national action plan in which all green growth strategy targets are clear. In addition, it is necessary for the country to focus on three important targets relating to institutions, policies and capacity intensification.

The Republic of Korea, which pioneered and is pursuing the green growth model in Asia, has been accompanying Vietnam in building and materializing its green growth strategy.-VNA