Participants in the 53rd meeting of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) Task Force (Photo: Vietnam’s permanent mission to ASEAN)Jakarta (VNA) – Cooperation to narrow the gap of developmentin ASEAN has gained positive strides recently, members of the Initiative forASEAN Integration (IAI) Task Force said at their 53rd meeting at the ASEANSecretariat’s headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, last weekend.
According to Vietnam’s permanent mission toASEAN, the implementation of the IAI Work Plan III since the beginning of 2017has reeled in encouraging outcomes in terms of both quantity and quality.
By the end of September, 11 of the 26cooperation lines and six support areas had been carried out through 22projects worth 8.28 million USD in total.
In the five prioritised fields under the workplan, IAI projects have focused on dealing with problems facing Cambodia, Laos,Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) such as agricultural product safety, post-harvestloss reduction, e-commerce development, building policy framework to attractFDI into small- and medium-sized enterprises, and English language training.
Notably, the monitoring and assessment ofprojects have been based on not only the project number or the funding, butalso their meeting of concrete criteria for each cooperation lines.
The CLMV countries have also played a moreactive role in building projects matching local demand. Ten of the 13 new IAIprojects which are being designed or about to begin were proposed byspecialised agencies of the CLMV nations.
The Vietnamese mission said supporting developmentgap reduction in ASEAN is also a priority of the bloc’s partners which havevowed to sponsor 7.38 million USD for 11 projects under the IAI Work Plan III.
As the head of the IAI Task Force in 2017 – thefirst year of the IAI Work Plan III implementation, Vietnam has coordinatedwith other countries to synchronously take multiple measures to facilitate thework.
Since the start of the year, the Vietnamesemission chaired three regular meetings of the IAI Task Force to discuss ways tostep up the work plan implementation. It has also made use of tens of othermeetings between ASEAN and partners to introduce the IAI, added the IAI-relatedcontent to the bloc’s cooperation programmes and plans with partners, andworked to mobilise funding for IAI and relevant projects.
The mission has also suggested various measuresin order to improve coordination and sense of responsibility of the CLMV’sspecialised agencies in the IAI implementation.
Adopted at the 28th ASEAN Summit in September2016, the IAI Work Plan III specifies five priorities for cooperation indevelopment gap narrowing between 2016-2020, namely food and agriculture; tradefacilitation; micro, small and medium enterprises; education; and health andwell-being.-VNA
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