[29 May 2011] In the wake of the financial crisis, economies are increasingly looking at creating jobs by strengthening their high-potential industries to make them more competitive in the global marketplace. Several countries have approached the World Bank Group in recent months to provide industry specific assistance. To gear up to fulfil this rising client demand, and linked to its Global Practices initiative, IFC has launched the Competitive Industries (CI) Global Practice. The Practice will assist the private sector and governments in developing countries to identify potential growth industries, to detect potential constraints hindering these industries from taking off and to design appropriate industry specific interventions to unleash market forces.

The overall objective of the CI Practice is to be responsive to developing country demands for assistance in fostering and supporting the development of industries able to effectively compete in global markets. It aims to help developing countries make informed decisions and choices so as to maximize developmental impact in terms of investment, job and income creation by focusing limited resources towards targeted private sector support at the industry level. The ultimate target of CI engagements at the country level is to design initiatives which explicitly aim to generate new private sector investments, firm growth and creation of jobs and income by strengthening market forces.

Vietnam is one of the first proposed World Bank Group CI projects. The Vietnam CI project is co-led by IFC Vietnam and World Bank FPD Vietnam. In this context, IFC Vietnam has entrusted Economica Vietnam to implement a  rapid sector competitiveness analysis, sector identification, sector deep-dive diagnostics and concept note drafting in Vietnam.

The exercise will be finalized in this summer and the results will be published in September 2011.