France will provide Vietnam with a loan of 20 million EUR to helpHo Chi Minh City achieve its socio-economic development objectives,meet the challenges of its urban growth and encourage measures to copewith climate change.

The financing agreement infavour of the urban development fund Ho Chi Minh Finance and InvestmentCompany (HFIC) will be signed on May 5 between Vietnamese FinanceMinister Vu Van Ninh, General Director of the French Development Agency(AFD) Dov Zerah, and French Ambassador to Vietnam Jean Francois Girault.

The programme, partially financed by AFD throughHFIC will enable the building of social housing and educationalinstitutions, as well as the reinforcement of capacity and care ofhospitals, and the modernisation of waste collection and management.

The total cost of the programme comes to 96 million EUR. The AFD’sloan to the Vietnamese government, on-lent to HFIC, covers about 20percent of the costs. Co-financing is provided by public (Government,municipality and companies) or private structures.

In 2006, AFD was the first investor to support HFIC, granting aninitital credit line of 30 million EUR. This facility was designed infavour of social housing, with 10,000 people benefiting from new,quality housing as well as education, health and environment (treatmentof solid waste stations) projects.

With this newfinance agreement, the total accumulated net commitments of AFD forpublic official development assistance (ODA) in Vietnam will amountto about 1,050 billion EUR./.