“It is hard to believe that a country with the population of over 80 million reduced poverty from 60% to 13% within only 15 years time.”

In August 2007 the Government of Uzbekistan approved the Welfare Improvement Strategy (WIS) for 2008-2010. The Strategy identifies key national priorities, objectives, steps and budget to implement the government plan. Creating an appropriate monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system, introducing effective sectoral policies and ensuring wide public participation are key conditions for WIS implementation. Having clear understanding of this, the government of Uzbekistan established a M&E Group under the Ministry of Economy. The Group is supposed to work in close interaction with relevant departments of the Ministry of Economy, line ministries and other central and regional government authorities. To enhance the capacities of the specialists involved in WIS implementation and learn best practices it was decided to organize a study tour to a country that managed to achieve significant progress in implementing national development and poverty reduction programs. The World Bank identified Vietnam to host this study tour.

In international development, Vietnam has the reputation as a success story, having grown dramatically in recent years and managed to reduce poverty rates by more than half between 1993 and 2002. The objectives of the Peer learning exercise were to learn the general course of economic reform and development in Vietnam. How multi-year development strategies were formulated and implemented? What are key elements that ensured achieving development objectives? Which way an effective M&E system for national development strategies was established? How were the needs of national development strategies assessed and cost? These are by no means all questions discussed by Uzbek and Vietnamese colleagues during the meetings in the Ministry of Planning and Investment, General Statistics Office, Ministry of Finance, Parliament, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ministry of Education and Training, Ministry of Heath and other government agencies.

The value of the study tour lies not simply in the obvious practical advantage that the colleagues benefited from each other.  It has become a valuable means of giving direct feedback and thinking of adjusting appropriate tools to the current Uzbek WIS. One of the Uzbek team members said: “This tour gave us a chance to see how the country, which had survived three wars in the second half of XX century, moved so far in its economic development. One can hardly believe that a country with the population of over 80 million reduced poverty from 60% to 13% within only 15 years time”