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