Rural development and speeding up poverty relief and eradicating hunger is pivotal to Vietnam’s strategy for sustainable growth and development, Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung said on Sept. 28 in Hanoi.

Hung made the remarks at the opening ceremony of a conference entitled “The Impact of the Global Economic Slowdown on Poverty and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific,” the first one of its type in the region so far.

The global economic crisis has had many serious economic and social impacts, especially on rural areas which are home to over 70 percent of Vietnam’s population, he said.

The Permanent Deputy PM said that Vietnam considers the challenges an opportunity to adopt economic stimulus measures that take account of the livelihoods and welfare of poor people. The government has carried out various programmes to support 62 of the poorest districts in the country, including building housing for people on low-incomes and vocational training for farmers.

Rising unemployment as well as the spread of poverty replace have seriously affected social welfare and stability in every country in the region as well as impeded their progress in implementing the United Nations’ Millennium development goals (MDGs), he added.

The Permanent Deputy PM underlined the need for regional countries to increase cooperation and adopt immediate measures to generate employment, create sustainable financial sources for health, education, infrastructure in rural areas and introduce a social welfare system to improve peoples’ material and culture lives.

The conference, he said, will be a forum to exchange information and come up with initiatives and solutions to deal with the adverse impacts of the global crisis on poverty reduction and rural development.

In a speech to the conference the same day, the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda said that Asia’s poor have been the hardest hit, in part because of a lack of adequate social safety nets to cushion their fall from the slowdown in economic activity.

He called for structural reforms to ensure social development and address the key challenges that are preventing Asia from developing, which is enhancing its resilience to external shocks.

Organised by the ADB, in collaboration with the governments of Vietnam and China and the ASEAN Secretariat, the conference is the first to touch on the social impacts of the crisis in the Asia and Pacific region. It attracted 350 delegates from 28 countries, 25 development agencies and embassies and 13 non-governmental organisations./.