Hanoi, June 17 -- As official development assistance (ODA) is no longer concessional financing but increasingly structured as loans at commercial interest rates based on negotiations and agreements, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Van Thang stressed the need for a change in approach towards this source of capital and called for special attention to speeding up disbursement of ODA-funded projects. Thang made the request while chairing a meeting with ministries and sectors in Hanoi on June 17 to review public investment disbursement and address bottlenecks affecting ODA projects. According to the Ministry of Finance, in the first six months of the year, proposals for new ODA loans worth nearly 1.7 billion USD were approved, while procedures we...