Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently approved a project designed to preserve and promote the culture of ethnic minority groups in Vietnam until 2020.

The project emphasises the central role of the community, which will raise and implement initiatives and benefit from the project’s outcomes, said the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism at a press conference in Hanoi on Aug. 18.

The State will not do itself but support and create favourable conditions for the preservation and development of special cultural identities of ethnic minority groups.

The 1,512 billion VND project is divided into two phases, with the first phase to run between now and 2015 and the second phase to take place during the 2016-2020 period, said Hoang Duc Hau, Head of the ministry’s Ethnic Culture Department.

It targets ethnic minority groups in remote areas, especially in the Northwest, Central Highlands and Southwest, Hau said, noting that such groups are unable to preserve and promote their own cultures, which are standing on the edge of oblivion.

The project includes six smaller tasks with a focus on creating an inventory of cultural heritages of ethnic minorities, improving capacity to preserve and promote cultures, eliminating unsound customs and combining economic development with cultural conservation./.