The cost of implementing Vietnam’s national plan of action for nutrition for 2017–2020

Background: There is an urgent need to carry out a costing exercise of the National Plan of Action for Nutrition (NPAN) 2017–2020 since the costing of nutrition-sensitive interventions was not entirely integrated and proved difficult to track the different sectors’ contributions to the nutrition program. Objective: To estimate the required budget for the activities of the NPAN in 2017–2020. Methods: A standard ingredients approach activity-based costing was employed from the provider perspective. Results: The budget amount required for the NPAN activities in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 would be US$ million 269.0; 310.5; 350.2 and 378.1, respectively. State budgets (especially from Ministry of Health) would be the main funding source for the NPAN. The budget required for implementing nutrition-sensitive interventions would be the largest share (more than 90%) while less than 10% are required for nutrition-specific interventions. The four interventions requiring the largest budget proportion (in 2020) included 1) Micronutrient supplementation (28.3%); 2) Breastfeeding & complementary feeding (21.9%); 3) Treatment of severe acute malnutrition (15.6%); and 4) Disease prevention and management (13.4%). Conclusions: Based on the data from Vietnam National Health account and the data on GDP of Vietnam, the total required budget for the Vietnam NPAN 2017 (USD millions 5,082) as shares of the State budget for health, total State (Government) budget, and GDP would be 5.29%, 0.49% and 0.14%, respectively. From the estimation, Vietnam represents the nutrition strategy which prioritized on nutrition-sensitive actions, similar to most of the SUN Movement member countries.