The scope of the study is to focus on projects with a direct poverty reduction support focus or elements, whether directly funded through the state and local budgets or through policies supporting access to social services. The purpose of this study is primarily a mapping exercise of Vietnam’s poverty reduction projects and does not go into a detailed evaluation of the implementation of the Vietnamese government’s poverty reduction programmes or scope of legislation for poverty reduction. Mid-term reviews are now available for two key poverty reduction projects, P135-II and the NTP-PR and a mid-term review for the RWSS project is currently being finalized. These reports give a complete overview of project implementation.

The study report has three sections. Firstly, the team set about “mapping” the current policies and projects of the government specifically for poverty reduction. The mapping stage reviewed government policy in order to develop a database of Vietnam’s poverty reduction policies and projects at design and then compare this with reported results from implementation. During the mapping stage data was collected on various components of poverty reduction programmes, overseeing agencies, coordination between different implementing agencies and components as well as looking at expected outputs compared to those reported.