UN body assist Vietnam

UN body assist Vietnam

HANOI (AFP): The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) will provide more than US$7.8 million for a poverty alleviation program in central Vietnam, the group said in a press release yesterday.

The funds will form part of a five-year project in cooperation with the Association of Netherlands Municipalities and the Vietnamese government to invest in small-scale infrastructural projects in Quan Nam-Da Nang province.

The project will help to rehabilitate and construct various local infrastructures, including health clinics, irrigation pumping stations, small bridges, access roads, schools and market facilities.

According to statistics on GDP for 1993 released by the World Bank, the latest and most accurate figures available, the province accounted for just 2.3 percent of GDP with 2.7 percent of the population.

A United Nations Development Program property report issued late last year indicated that about half of Vietnam's population fell below the poverty line, and that more than 80 percent of this group lived in rural areas.