Japan, Vietnam's single biggest donor of development assistance, called ODA, will offer $1.64 billion. It suspended aid earlier this year for several months over a corruption scandal involving a Japanese-funded project.
The World Bank offered $2.5 billion and the Asian Development Bank pledged $1.48 billion at the annual Consultative Group (CG) donors' meeting.
The Southeast Asian country's planning ministry has forecast that it will have attracted about $5 billion in pledges in 2009, with $3 billion disbursed, state media reported.
Donors lauded recent steps by the government to realign its macroeconomic policy toward stability, including a currency devaluation and interest rate hike.
Several Western development partners, including the United States
and European Union, also stressed the need for better protection of
freedom of expression and other rights.
The World Bank's representative in Vietnam, Victoria Kwakwa, said a
key theme was improving business competitiveness and reinvigorating
state-owned enterprise reform."I think the message from donors to government is to really move forward on this and to move forward in a bold way," she said.
The increased ODA comes with Vietnam's economy on track to grow around 5 percent this year, according to government figures.
Vietnam is also likely to cross the middle income threshold of having average annual per capita income of at lease $1,000 next year, which will have an affect on the composition of future aid and is likely to impact the total volume.
The World Bank and other development partners were already beginning to discuss how the annual Consultative Group meeting should change as middle income status alters Vietnam's eligibility for certain types of assistance, Kwakwa said.
"We don't expect that there will be a major cut-off, just like that. I think that it will be more gradual and in a way that responds to the needs that the country still has," Kwakwa said.
Mark Kent, the British ambassador, said this CG had already started to look at those challenges.
"While obviously keeping the focus on poverty reduction is going to be important still, increasingly we are going to be looking at other challenges if Vietnam wants to keep on moving up the value chain, things like dealing with corruption, dealing with infrastructure," he said.
Climate change figured prominently this year, and a United Nations official said earlier in the week that future soft loans and other development aid to Vietnam could be dominated by climate change-related projects.
Vietnam is recognised as one of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, including rising sea level.
(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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