"Avoiding the Middle-Income Trap: Addressing Key Development Priorities in a Post-Crisis Vietnam".
John Hendra, 2009 Yale World Fellow and UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam

Over the past 15 years, Vietnam has achieved high rates of economic growth and successfully converted these into progressive social outcomes with the poverty rate in particular declining by almost 75 per cent over this period. While Vietnam is on track to achieve all of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015 with the exception of MDG 6 regarding HIV/AIDS and some of the water supply and sanitation targets under MDG 7 on Environmental Sustainability, Vietnam now faces a set of new challenges as it becomes a lower middle-income country by virtue of its recent passing the threshold of US$ 1,000 per capita. While many developing countries cross this threshold, climbing further up the development ladder becomes increasingly difficult and many developing countries get "trapped" at this level. In order for Vietnam to avoid this trap, and to meet its ambitious development goals of achieving industrial country status by 2020 and, more broadly, building a "prosperous people, a strong country and an equitable and civilized society," it will be imperative that it successfully address a number of priority development challenges including structural economic reform, corruption, legal and judicial reform, social policy reform, higher education reform and climate change.

John Hendra is currently at Yale for four months as a Yale World Fellow. He has served as UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam since mid-2006. In addition to overseeing all UN programmatic support (US$ 80 million per annum) and policy advice in various areas including social policy reform, democratic governance and climate change, he is also responsible for spearheading the "One UN Initiative", a major UN reform project aimed at enhancing the impact of the UN in an individual country. Vietnam is one of only eight countries piloting wide-ranging reform in the UN's development operations, and is seen globally as the country that has advanced the furthest. Prior to Vietnam, John served as UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Tanzania and in Latvia as well as Deputy Director of UNDP's Bureau for Strategic Partnerships.

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