Vietnam plans to increase the average incomes of poor households by 3.5 times from now to 2020 in efforts to reduce the poverty rate by 2 percent each year, according to Resolution No. 80/NQ-CP issued by the Government recently.

The resolution, introduced at a meeting in Hanoi on May 30, outlined pathways towards sustainable poverty reduction in the 2011-2020 period.

The resolution affirmed the Government’s determination to continue to implement poverty reduction policies more effectively.

The document also created a fundamental basis for the building and implementation of a comprehensive and united national poverty reduction target programme, with priorities given to remote, mountainous, ethnic minority-inhabited, coastal and island areas, in order to reduce the regional difference gap.

From now to 2020, poor people’s living conditions will be improved, especially in health care, education, culture, fresh water and housing.

Socio-economic infrastructure in disadvantaged and extremely disadvantaged localities will receive investment, with a focus on transport and electricity systems and water for daily use.

The meeting, jointly held by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme, also released the result of a survey on Vietnam ’s poverty rate in 2010, which said that the rate fell from 22 percent in 2005 to 9.45 percent in 2010.

According to participants, Vietnam needed to create innovative poverty reduction policies to cope with long-lasting pockets of poverty, especially when the country has become a middle-income nation./.