The UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and Pacific (RBAP) has launched the Building Opportunities for Leadership in Development (BOLD) initiative to support countries in shaping forward-looking development strategies and cultivating the governance capabilities required to deliver them. It is a timely and ambitious agenda, and among the region’s diverse economies, Viet Nam stands to benefit from precisely this kind of support. Viet Nam has been one of the world’s fastest growing economies, with GDP growth averaging 6.6% since 2000 prior to the pandemic and further 6.9% from 2022. As it edges closer to the vaunted “middle income trap,” the country’s political leaders face a critical test: how to accelerate progress towards its goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045.

To their credit, the country’s top strategy bodies have recognized the need to transition to a new development model anchored in productivity, financial and ecological sustainability, and greater social inclusion. Viet Nam has the additional benefit of extraordinarily focused political leadership. Indeed, across the country, and at all levels of governance, there is a palpable sense and reality that the country has entered a key reform moment.

Ambition alone, however, will not suffice. Viet Nam’s ability to achieve breakthrough progress hinges on its capacity to craft effective strategies and, crucially, to translate them into results.

Over the past eight months, UNDP Viet Nam has been working closely with RBAP to design a tailored BOLD engagement for the country, one that combines high-level strategic accompaniment with governance capabilities support.  A crucial feature of Viet Nam is the extent to which the country’s strategy and governance functions have been decentralized over the last decades. While centralized strategy and governance functions are no guarantee of success, a decentralized consensus-based political and administrative system can limit government’s ability to navigate and implement national development agilely and adaptively across complex policy domains. 

Thankfully, our efforts to design the programme and to secure buy-in from top levels of leadership have begun to yield results, most notably through the establishment of regular working relations with two key institutions: the Central Commission for Policy and Strategy (CCPS) and the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics (HCMA). Efforts to engage other key government agencies, including the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Finance (which encompasses planning functions) are ongoing.

Viet Nam’s current reform moment is ultimately about forging and transitioning to a new growth model—one that sustains productivity gains, secures financial and ecological sustainability, and broadens social inclusion in line with the Party’s 2030 and 2045 goals. What is needed are not only the right reform choices but implementable strategies and the dynamic capabilities—the ability to sense, seize, and adapt—that enable government to translate strategy into action and resilts. Here, BOLD’s unique value lies in pairing strategic accompaniment with the cultivation of organizational capabilities for coordination, delivery, and cross-sector execution. Looking forward, UNDP can support Viet Nam by facilitating links between CCPS’s high-level horizon-scanning functions with government agencies responsible for policy coherence and delivery.

A key design element of BOLD is the identification of a few “strategic big bets,” areas where advisory and governance support can yield outsized impact. BOLD’s focus on a few strategic priorities can be reconciled with today’s push for diversification by selecting ‘big bets’ that simultaneously anchor national strategies and expand resilience through diversified trade relationships, regional integration, and innovation, as highlighted in RBAP’s Disruption, Diversification, and Divergence report.

In this context, we are identifying priorities where global and regional expertise and Viet Nam’s lead policymakers can come together for strategy sessions, identifying implementable policy pathways to drive prosperity, sustainability, and inclusive human development.  

Two recent activities reflect these efforts: a two-day Dynamic Capabilities Assessment Workshop UNDP Viet Nam organized in Ho Chi Minh City in collaboration with the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), and participation in IIPP’s “Rethinking the State” forum, followed by meetings with SOAS Professor Ha-Joon Chang, UCL/IIPP Professor Mariana Mazzucato, and Oxford University’s Stefan Dercon, author of Gambling on Development (speaking of big bets!).

Countries across Asia and Pacific and around the world would do well to study Viet Nam’s example. The challenge of upgrading growth strategies and strengthening governance is shared by all. But as BOLD shows, success lies not only in choosing the right reforms, but in having the political will, coordination, and capabilities to carry them through.