Environnetal Audit for the WB Project: Rural Finance Project III

To support Vietnam in rural economic development the Rural Finance Project III (RFPIII) of WB has providing a budget of about USD200 milion. The Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) is the project management unit (PMU) and over 30 commercial banks are the participartory financial institutions (PFIs) and over 110,000 householders are the last borrowers (sub-projects).

As other WB projects, the RFPIII strictly requires the participants (PMU, PFIs and sub-projects) properly implement measures for environmental management and pollution control. With its experiences in environmental supervision, monitoring and EIA for the international projects VESDEC was selected by WB and PMU to conduct environmental auditing for the End Term of this project.
From August to December 2013 20 environmentalists of VESDEC led by Dr. Le Trinh, a senior adviser, were conducted environmental audit at 385 selected subprojects in various sectors and 30 PFIs at the Northern, Central , Southern regions and the Central Highlands. Using suitable methods for envioronmental auditing VESDEC teams obtained sufficient information on the state of the environment at each sub-projects, measures applied by the PMU, PFIs and sub-projects in environmental management, their advantages and disadvantages in compliance with the Vietnamese and WB environmental requirements. An environmental audit report was prepared in English and Vietnamese following the WB requirements and submitted to BIDV and WB. The report is satisfied with the WB requirements.