Agreements on non-refundable aid and technical assistance were signed in Hanoi on July 25 by Nguyen Van Binh, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV), and Ayumi Konishi, Country Director of the Asia Development Bank (ADB) in Vietnam.

The new technical assistance grant of US$500,000 will help prepare the second SME development programme to build on the first SME development programme with the aim of accelerating further improvements in the business environment in Vietnam. A package of policies will be formulated for implementation during the 2008-2010 period based on Vietnam’s five-year SME development plan. An assessment will also be made of constraints to help the private sector further develop.

In addition, the Japanese government also provided another technical assistance package of US$600,000 to help Vietnam develop a “skills enhancement project” with the aim of enhancing vocational skills training to better respond to the demand for skilled workers in the key industrial and service sectors.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Van Binh highly valued the Japanese government’s assistance in recent times and emphasized that the Vietnamese government always attaches important to developing SMEs which play a key role in the national economy.

In recent years, Vietnam has undertaken a number of commendable reforms to improve the business environment for SMEs including the establishment of a policy framework for SME development in the 2006-2010 period, simplification of business registration and licensing systems, and improvement in SMEs’ access to land, finance, and technologies.