The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) will grant $15.42 million for Vietnam to carry out the second phase of its post-WTO program. Officials of the AusAID, the FDID and the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade inked the deals on Jan. 20 in Hanoi, the Thoi bao Kinh te newspaper reported Thursday. Under the agreements, the Australian and British agency will respectively donate AUD12 million and GBP3.4 million to Vietnam to implement the five-year second phase which was launched in September 2009. The second phase entitled “Maintaining the country’s sustainable development and benefits of poverty reduction via realizing its commitments to the WTO, is expected to help Vietnam accelerate its trade and investment activities in the post-global economic downturn. Earlier in late December, Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang said as few as 20% of Vietnamese businesses have taken advantages of taxes and certificates of origin to facilitate their trade activities in the post-WTO period due to poor information dissemination. Since joining WTO on January 11, 2007 as the 150th member, Vietnam’s trade gap narrowed to $12.246 billion in 2009 after it ballooned to $17.516 billion in 2008, up from $12.4 billion in 2007.
