The study reviews Vietnam’s economic development and its trade performance in the last two decades, as the country has moved to a market-based economy and opened up to the world. It highlights key challenges the country is facing at this new stage of development. This report also reviews donor assistance to Vietnam in the last two decades. Donors’ alignment with the government’s strategy has been well received, but requires a more effective and flexible mechanism so that the comparative advantages of each donor can be fully exploited and co-ordination and harmonisation become smoother. As a concrete step towards introducing and strengthening meaningful and comparable results frameworks for aid for trade, this report recommends the following activities as a follow-up to the study: Working with the government and Working with the donor community.

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