World Bank Will Lend $400M to Water Supply Projects in Vietnam

A foreign newswire has reported that the Vietnamese Ministry of Construction has assumed a long-stalled project on water supply in Vietnam’s Mekong delta costing $1.7 billion in total, including $400 million to be financed by the World Bank. The project will include five plants to treat water on the Hau and Tien rivers to supply safe water to the whole region once they kicked off construction in 2018. The project, which received the prime minister’s approval last month, expects to provide safe water to the region of 18 million people. According to local media, demand of safe water in the Mekong delta would reach 3.2 million cubic meters (cu.m) per day by 2030 and the government plans to build five water supply plants in the region by 2025 to meet the demand. Currently, the water supply capacity in the region hits more than 985,000 cu.m/day with 66% of the total input coming from Tien and Hau rivers. (Globalwaterintel.com Dec 20)