Poverty reduction policy should be encouraging: Deputy PM

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) — The average household poverty rate in Vietnam dropped by 1.51 percent from 2016 to 6.72 percent in 2017, according to the national target programme on sustainable poverty reduction.

The decline rate is higher than the target set by the National Assembly, 1.3 percent to 1.5 percent.

The country has also mobilised almost 400 trillion VND (17.7 billion USD) from the State budget, enterprises, organisations and individuals for the cause of new-style rural area building and poverty reduction.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue, while chairing a meeting of the Central Steering Committee on National Target Programmes in 2016-2020 in Hanoi on February 28, asked member ministries of the committee to be more active, determined, creative and aggressive in sustainable poverty reduction.

Bui Sy Loi, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Social Affairs, praised the Government’s efforts in poverty reduction in 2017, saying he was especially impressed by the fact that the Government had called on enterprises, organisations and individuals to make donations of more than 126 trillion VND (5.6 billion USD).

For his part, Hue said the remarkable achievement was the completion of the legal framework document for the phase 2016 – 2020 in terms of new criteria for new-style rural area models and multi-dimensional approaches for sustainable poverty reduction. The framework also includes new models for agriculture restructuring, climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods.

“The important thing is that member ministries and localities have to be active when implementing programmes and ensuring efficiency in investment,” he said.

The Deputy PM required that in the next two years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to work on the new criteria set for “poor districts”.

“The new criteria should be able to encourage localities to try and escape poverty, not encourage them to maintain poverty to enjoy supporting policies like they do currently,” Hue said.

According to the Ministry of Investment and Planning, in 2018 the country would try to reduce the rate of poor households from 1 to 1.5 percent per year, basing on the multi-dimensional poverty approach.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said the building of new-style countryside needed to focus on improving income for residents while still protecting the environment and conserving local cultural characteristics.

The country would try to have 15,000 agriculture cooperatives by 2020, he added. — VNA