only possible therefore to make a general assessment of equity issues in these consultations and this is certainly an aspect that should be strengthened in the future through monitoring the CPRGS implementation.

# 4.4 Building on the consultations - future monitoring of the CPRGS

The CPRGS has a strong accountability framework in which the Government sets out what it is trying to achieve and how progress will be measured, at least at the broad outcome level. The General Statistics Office (GSO) has put in place a system of biannual household surveys. These will measure household expenditures to track material changes in household livelihoods and will gather data on other dimensions of poverty. There will be great value in supplementing this information with qualitative surveys, which can provide feedback on many dimensions of the CPRGS less well captured by quantitative data. This could also identify why and in which areas progress is being achieved, or not.

One option would be to return to these local consultation sites at regular intervals as the CPRGS is being implemented. There is now in place a network of local officials and community members who are familiar with the research techniques and who have articulated their appreciation of this kind of participatory research directed at improving policy. This is a valuable resource and it would be a shame not to use it in future work. The future research could ask communities and local officials to respond to questioning along the following broad lines (obviously refined much further): _"The Government was hoping to achieve X over the past 2 years. Did this happen, here, in your area? And if not, what factors might have prevented this from occurring? And what could be done in the future to address these constraints?"_ Both the fieldwork and the analysis would be challenging, but - done well - this could provide extremely useful, focused information that could feed directly into the process of improving national plans and policy-making.

These findings could also- feed- into future household survey design, informing the scope and detail of questionnaire used. The findings from the PPAs have informed the discussions on the design of the household survey that has been carried out in 2002. As an example, the issues that arose in discussions with unregistered urban migrants in the Ho Chi Minh City PPA led to a stronger effort in the 2002 GSO household survey to ensure that households without formal registration in urban areas would be included in the sampling frame. The would be a good argument for using future participatory research to ensure that the household survey is addressing the relevant dimensions of poverty.

In such future monitoring of the CPRGS, it would be beneficial to expand the number and range of sites in which this type of exercise would be carried out. For instance, to augment the work in Ho Chi Minh City, it would be useful to include a wider range of urban situations, including selection from the rapidly growing secondary cities and peri-urban centers. Coastal areas and communities could also be better represented, as these are currently areas of rapid economic development and highly complex interactions between wealth, prosperity and poverty situations. The only truly mountainous location included in the PPAs and these consultations is the northern province of Lao Cai, which could be complemented by an additional upland area. As part of this effort, it would be essential to broaden the base of competent researchers, and to continue to 55