The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has recent signed a co-operation agreement on Private Sector Liaison Officer (PSLO) programme in Vietnam with the World Bank Group. This is to help the business community, especially the private sector, as well as to attract the involvement of enterprises to development and poverty reduction issues.
PSLO is an intermediary network, connecting entrepreneurs and enterprises with the World Bank Group. The network may consist of such intermediary organisations as chambers of commerce and industry, business and trade associations, or investment promotion agencies. PSLO will help foster trade and investment between countries with the support of the WBG’s products and services, and help the private sector to get access to projects, products and services of the World Bank Group, the International Financial Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Concretely, services and products the World Bank Group may provide for enterprises include project financial sponsor with between US$15 billion and 20 billion per year, capital investment, tools in the form of capital, guarantees for investors, helping them avoid non-business risks, including wars.
PSLOs will act as a representative of the private sector in Vietnam. They will tell the World Bank Group about private enterprises’ wishes from the organisation, and advise it measures to attract the private sector to join development programmes of the World Bank Group. PSLOs will disseminate information about investment and business opportunities with the World Bank Group to enterprises, helping them contact with the group. They will organise symposiums and seminars to get inputs and comments of the private sector on their interested issues to provide information to the World Bank Group. PSLOs will organise seminars on shopping procedures and national and regional investment, and organise business delegations to Washington DC and developed countries.
Addressing questions about VCCI’s plan of action in the coming time, Vu Tien Loc, president of VCCI, said that: “In addition to being the focal point of information regarding business opportunities with the World Bank Group in Vietnam and worldwide, we plan to organize local events on development issues of interest to the private sector in Vietnam such as procurement seminars to train consultants and suppliers on competitive bidding procedures in World Bank funded projects.”
Also at the signing ceremony, Sin-Foong Wong, country director of IFC Vietnam, said that: “with the PSLO network, we are in constant dialogue with people from the private sector, with people who will be able to tell us what we should be doing to perform our core mission of poverty alleviation better.”
Launched in Europe in January 1999 as a joint World Bank, IFC and MIGA initiative, the PSLO network includes today some 54 PSLOs in 41 countries, and territories. Doan Thuy Nga in Hanoi and Nguyen Thanh Binh in Ho Chi Minh City will be the first PSLOs in Vietnam.
Nguyen Thoa
Vietnamese
