Poverty reduction – Vietnam’s outstanding achievement

An ambitious target of hunger eradication and poverty reduction will be considered at the upcoming tenth National Party Congress to remove the existence of hungry households and reduce the rate of poor households (according to new standard) down to 15-16% by 2010.

Vietnam is now running a socialist-oriented market economy. o­ne of the features of socialist orientation is to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty. In this field, Vietnam has recorded encouraging achievements.

The poverty rate has reduced rapidly in recent years. The rate under the old poverty lines, also known as low poverty rate or food-poor, stayed at 7% in 2005, a sharp reduction as compared to 17.5% in 2001, over 2% and equivalent to over 300,000 households per year According to the World Bank poverty line (high poverty rate or including the minimum consumption level of both food and non-food items) decreased sharply from 58% in 1993 to 37.4% in 1998, 28.9% in 2002 and 24.1% in 2004.

All eight regions in the country were reported to have experienced significant reductions, remaining at 6.7% in the South East, 19.5% in the Mekong Delta, 21.1% in Red River Delta, 21.3% in the South Central Coast, 54.4% in the North West, 41.4% in the North Central Coast, 32.7% in the Central Highlands and 31.7% in North East.

The above records have been attained due to many reasons, especially the high economic growth in recent years as well as the harmonious and effective implementation of measures in hunger eradication and poverty reduction. The work has been reformed continuously, appropriate with the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy initiated by the Government following the country’s commitment to realising the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This has created favourable conditions for the poor people to access basic social services, helping to raise people’s literacy, providing more jobs and income and improving people’s living standards.

Sectors and administration at different levels have better implemented poverty reduction measures by granting soft loans for poor people to boost production and encouraging all people to join the fight against hunger and poverty. More policies have been issued to support ethnic minority groups in terms of land for housing and cultivation, safe water, health care and education.

After five years of implementing the Programme for Socio-Economic Development of poorest communes better (known as Programme 135), basic infrastructure has been built in these areas to serve local people’s production and daily life. Many localities have launched the role-model movement o­n helping the poor to build houses.

In order to achieve higher records in poverty reduction, further efforts should be made to ensure the quality of the work, avoid the risk of repeated poverty, ease the difficulties faced by those living remote areas or regularly natural disaster-stricken areas and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.