UN Women’s Head of Office in Vietnam Elisa Fernandez addresses the workshop (Source: phunuvietnam.vn)Hanoi (VNA) – The UN Women in Vietnam and the AsiaDevelopment Bank in Vietnam held a workshop on December 6 on promoting gender responsivebudgeting in Vietnam.
Addressing the event, UN Women’s Head of Office in Vietnam Elisa Fernandez said UN Women hassupported more than 60 countries in gender responsive budget planning. InVietnam, since 2014, the agency has conducted research and improved capacityfor relevant parties in the work.
She said that Vietnam’s Law on State Budget 2015 affirmed the country’scommitment to gender equality through State budget spending. However, Fernandezurged Vietnam to design specific guidelines for the work, including raisingpublic awareness and building coordination mechanism between financial,planning agencies and other parties.
Meanwhile, Aaron Batten, ADB Senior Economist, said that gender equalityis a focus of the bank’s development support programmes for Asia-Pacific. Improvingwomen’s capacity in economic development is crucial in poverty reduction andgrowth, he said, adding that the ADB has introduced gender responsive budgetingin Vietnam through a programme to improve public spending in Vietnam from 2014.
At the workshop, experts defined gender responsive budgeting as thewhole process of planning, implementing, supervising and auditing State fundingwith careful consideration to gender issues.
Nguyen Minh Tan, Vice Director of the National Assembly Office’sDepartment of Finance and Budget said that for the first time, the Law on StateBudget 2015 prioritised the allocation of funds to meet gender equality goals.
Participants also sought measures to build effective tools in promotinggender equality, while sharing experience of some countries in implementinggender responsive budgeting, and discussing Vietnam’s initiatives in the work.
Over the years, Vietnam has gained achievements in gender equality,including improving laws and the national system on gender equality.
However, Vietnam has faced a number of challenges, including employmentconditions in the informal sector, climate change impacts and limited access tosocial welfare, which seriously affect women and poor people.
Gender responsive budgeting, a tool for evaluating accountingresponsibility and supervising gender equality support commitments ofgovernments, has been applied in more than 100 countries.-VNA
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