Targeting the poor in sanitation and hygiene programs through results-based financing in Vietnam

This paper aims to demonstrate how an INGO can use OBA-type incentives to ensure sustainability and better poverty targeting and the OBA sanitation model has significant potential for scale-up in Vietnam.

The research found that with large-scale application of OBA, CHOBA 1 was effectively increasing sanitation adoption amongst the poorest 40% of the rural population. It is also noted that the progress on latrine construction was the greatest in communes where households were given consumer rebates and the Commune People’s Committee were incentivized through Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). Therefore, CCT is less effective than consumer rebates. Consumer rebates made up an important part of the toilet construction trigger. The findings of the research also indicated that  the availability of credit may facilitate access to improved sanitation for the poor, showing that CHOBA was scalable and an appropriate model for nationwide sanitation coverage expansion thanks to the fact that the program cost per latrine built was lower than that build in the third phase of the donor supported National Target Program.