[sustran] Re: ADB in Viet Nam: Bring on the Asphalt!

Zvi Leve zvi.leve at gmail.com
Mon Dec 17 08:02:04 JST 2007


*Hi Todd,

>
> How could you infer that I think Vietnam should stay underdeveloped? In
> fact I think I said I appreciated and wanted the opposite.
>

Of course I know that you have good intentions and certainly want the best
for Vietnam, but I am just trying to highlight that the ADB also has good
intentions, although you may not want to admit it. Major investment projects
can only be put into motion by certain kinds of institutions - those with
huge amounts of money!  Due to the nature of these institutions, they tend
to prefer backing a small number of large projects as opposed to trying to
manage a larger number of small projects.  Many of these agencies are slowly
starting to recognize the importance of 'soft development' (institutional
frameworks, training, etc.) as well, but there is much work to be done. You
know the saying: "give someone a fish and they eat for a day, teach someone
to fish and they can feed themselves for a lifetime". It is the same in
development work. I hope that development work in the 21st century will
concentrate more on building skills and knowledge (who better to identify
the needs of Vietnam than the Vietnamese themselves?) and less on building
physical things.

As Chris noted, the French had built a rail link through this corridor in
the early 20th century, but it has since fallen into disrepair. This has
also happened to much of the 'colonial' infrastructure which was built in
Africa. In a sense, development agencies are still building the same kinds
of often misguided projects, but their goals are presumably different.
Colonial powers were interested in maximizing their returns from trade so
they focused on connecting ports with resource-rich hinterlands (the
Belgians left Congo with an extensive well-built road-network), whereas
development agencies hopefully are applying a different calculus as to what
constitutes 'regional development' (although I do admit that the choice of
projects does look rather similar). The one constant is that some external
'authority' is providing a massive investment in infrastructure yet they are
not providing any means for the maintenance of this investment! If this is
not changed, then with time these efforts will also recede back into the
jungles as surely as previous efforts have....


Cheers,

Zvi
*


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