The Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) Municipal Partners for Economic Development (MPED) is a five-year program (2010–15) designed to support sustainable and equitable economic development in seven developing countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The program partners and direct beneficiaries are local governments and local government associations (LGAs) from these seven countries. MPED is undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In Asia, the program is active in Vietnam and Cambodia. MPED also
supports the engagement of program partners in regional (i.e. within Asia) knowl edge sharing, global policy development, and program coordination, with an emphasis on economic development, environmental sustainability
and gender equality.
By strategically concentrating resources on local-level “demonstration projects”, MPED allows partners to develop new evidence-based models and practices for effective municipal management and economic development. The resulting knowledge and data give partners (in particular LGAs) the wherewithal to influence national policy development and replicate local successes.
This Vietnamese case study has been identified and documented within the MPED framework by the Association of Cities of Vietnam (ACVN), supported by FCM through CIDA funding. The intention is to share ideas with Cambodian and Vietnamese municipalities—as well as other stakeholders in the decentralization and local economic development (LED) effort—and to provide them with new ways to support LED. Its aim is to propose ideas that work, and to question the practices underlying these models with a view to triggering the discussions required to adapt and transfer these experiences to other contexts.
