HANOI, VIETNAM, April 13 (Reuters) - The Vietnamese government has approved a plan to seek loans of up to $6.43 billion (S$9.746594 billion) this year from foreign governments and banks.

Of the amount, the government will directly borrow $1.1 billion in medium and long-term commercial loans and about $1.73 billion in foreign governments' official development assistance and soft loans, the government said in a statement seen on Monday.

The poor Southeast Asian country relies heavily on foreign governments' preferential loans to develop infrastructure such as roads, bridges and water supply systems.

The government also said it would pay about $930 million this year to repay some external debt, which stood at about $26.8 billion at end 2008, according to data from the World Bank.

The government also forecast the private sectors would seek about $3 billion in commercial loans from foreign banks this year.

(Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Editing by Kim Coghill)