Local and overseas experts discussed a range of proposals to reduce the number of poor households while ensuring sustainable development over the period 2011-2020 at a seminar in Hanoi on Dec. 28.

They said that Vietnam should select a model that combines growth with reducing poverty to create the right conditions for poor people to improve their capabilities and increase their chances to access to economic sources.

On the other hand, the nation needs to attach poverty reduction targets to the criteria for building new urban areas, social welfare policies and vocational training programmes for rural labourers.

Deputy Minister of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Trong Dam confirmed that the Vietnamese Government always includes eradicating hunger and reducing poverty in its national economic development plans. Vietnam is considered a role model in the field, he added.

The number of poor households decreased from 58 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2008 after 10 years of introducing the country’s national poverty reduction programme. Thanks to it, many poor people have now more chance of accessing basic social services, including education, health care, electricity, safe water and environmental hygiene, said the seminar./.