May 12, 2004

Vietnam Receive Continued Aid For Poultry Recovery

The World Bank (WB) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) pledged a total of 8.9 million USD to help Viet Nam recover its poultry stocks in the aftermath of bird flu.

This was unveiled at a conference jointly held by the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the WB and FAO in Ha Noi on Monday. The conference discussed steps to undertake in the post-bird flu poultry recovery programme.

The funding, likely to be disbursed in June, will be used to assist 40,000 ranchers and 13 poultry breeding farms nationwide to restore poultry flocks. It will also help health and veterinary authorities enhance their capacities of detecting and controlling epidemics as well as their efforts to strengthen their grassroots networks.

Viet Nam had contained the bird flu epidemic by February 27. The outbreak triggered immense damage to the country, with more than 38 million fowl, or 15.1 percent of the country's flock, culled.

The Government spent hundreds of billions of dong to cull infected poultry and support farmers in the fight against the bird flu outbreak. In addition to price hikes, tourism and investment attraction were also affected.

The Vietnamese Government plans to spend between 500-510 billion VND for poultry production recovery in the post-epidemic period and to prevent the disease's recurrence.