International roundtable on seeking better aid usage opens in Viet Nam

The third international roundtable on managing for development results kicked off here Tuesday, aiming at helping developing countries and donors gain more results with their aid money.

"The main objective of the roundtable is to achieve firm political commitments as well as agreed action plans among donors and partner countries on enhancing aid effectiveness by managing for development results," Pham Gia Khiem, Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, said at the event's opening ceremony.

The second roundtable in 2004 in Morocco agreed on five principles for managing results: increasing dialogues, linking planning, monitoring and evaluation with results, simplifying indicators, and use of results information, he noted.

Over 400 government officials and experts from 42 countries, 33 aid and donor agencies and 30 non-governmental organizations and private companies have registered to participate in the three-day third roundtable to discuss how to better improve the results made possible with development aid which stood at 87 billion U.S. dollars in 2005 worldwide.

At the roundtable hosted by the Vietnamese government and sponsored by several foreign organizations including the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, Xu Lin, Director General of the Department of Fiscal and Financial Affairs under China's National Development and Reform Commission, told delegates in his keynote speech to the opening session
his country's recent experience and approach to the development of a result-based planning system. Political leadership and the government should be united to work closely to promote development for people, while the government should have a strategic development plan with clear directions for the country, he said.

"Public participation is necessary to reach common understanding about any issues within five-year plans and maintain the political support for them," he added.