HCM City officials hand over house to a poor family (Photo: VNA)
HCM City (VNA) - The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has raised standards of poor and near-poor households, which will be applied during 2016-2020, with new criteria on income and ability to access to basic services.
According to the new standards, a household is classified as poor when it’s annual income per capita is under 21 million VND (934.3 USD) while the near-poor one has an income per capita between 21 million VND (934.3 USD) and 28 million VND (1,245.7 USD).
Lack of access to five basic public services including education and training, healthcare, jobs and social insurance, living conditions and information is also used to grade who are poor or near poor.
Earlier, an annual income per capita of under 16 million VND (711.8 USD) was set as the standard poverty line while those earned between 16 million VND (711.8 million USD) and 21 million VND (934.3 USD) a year were named near-poor.
The 2015 standards categorised 9,905 families in the city as poor who accounted for 0.5 percent of total households and 35,117 others as near-poor, or 1.79 percent of total households.
Under the new poverty lines, total poor households in the city are calculated at over 59,000.
The new standards will help the city build suitable social welfare policies and map out coherent socio-economic policies during the period.-VNA
