Projects implemented with the support of Official Development Assistance (ODA) are a powerful urban development driver in Vietnam's big cities. The facts show that since the Asian crisis, private investors are tending to back away from long-term investments such as urban infrastructure projects that do not guarantee a quick return. On the other hand, ODA-supported projects may be very large in scale, from urban highway to water supply and sanitation systems, and thus have a significant impact on spatial structures as well as on social and political strategies.

The projects studied involve a variety of stakeholders from international donors to bilateral cooperation arrangements and obviously include the national authorities, corporations, the concerned communities and their more or less formalized advocacy groups. Our goal was to get a clear picture of the design of these projects and their objectives and take stock of their performance. The key findings are presented herewith.

The researchers sought to find answers to questions about delegation of authority within these projects, more specifically decentralization, involvement of the communities and degree of independence of the Vietnamese stakeholders in relation to the funding agency. We also wanted to identify the forms of skills and technology transfer associated with these projects and their validity. Generally, questions were asked regarding the effectiveness of development assistance mechanisms, as well as identification and exposure of obstacles encountered during project implementation.

Our analytical framework and methodology comprised a review of public policies and an action research approach, along with qualitative surveys of the key stakeholders in the projects selected as case studies. We interviewed persons from the Project Management Units (PMUs), households affected by the project, economic sector officials and local authorities (districts and sub-divisions), as well as a number of associations. Over sixty qualitative interviews were conducted with project stakeholders.

A seminar to pool the findings of the research was held at the Institute for Economic Research in Ho Chi Minh City, which enabled the researchers and field men to compare their findings.