The World Bank (WB) in Vietnam on Jan. 24 released a report on Vietnam’s poverty reduction in 2012 with the theme “2012 Vietnam poverty assessment - Well begun, not yet done: Vietnam's remarkable progress on poverty reduction and the emerging challenges”.
Presenting the report, Dr. Valerie Kozel, senior economic expert at the bank, said Vietnam’s record on economic growth and poverty reduction over the last two decades has been remarkable. In the basis of a “basic needs” poverty line initially agreed in the early 1990s, the poverty fell from 58 percent in the early 1990s to 14.5 percent by 2008, and by these standards was estimated to below 10 percent by 2010.
In some cases, Vietnam has surpassed many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he noted.
Despite the remarkable progress, the report said, poverty reduction is still not complete yet, and in a number of aspects the task is even more difficult.
Although tens of millions of Vietnamese households have risen out of poverty, many have incomes very near the poverty line and remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty as a result of idiosyncratic shocks, such as job loss, accidents, or death or illness of a household member, or related economy-wide shocks including the effects of climate change on rainfall and temperatures, human and animal influenza pandemics, and impacts of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, it stressed.
Vietnam’s success has created new challenges, it went on to say. Among others are inequality in incomes and opportunities, persistent ethnic minority poverty and gap between the rich and the poor.
The report was made by the World Bank in cooperation with the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences./.
Presenting the report, Dr. Valerie Kozel, senior economic expert at the bank, said Vietnam’s record on economic growth and poverty reduction over the last two decades has been remarkable. In the basis of a “basic needs” poverty line initially agreed in the early 1990s, the poverty fell from 58 percent in the early 1990s to 14.5 percent by 2008, and by these standards was estimated to below 10 percent by 2010.
In some cases, Vietnam has surpassed many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he noted.
Despite the remarkable progress, the report said, poverty reduction is still not complete yet, and in a number of aspects the task is even more difficult.
Although tens of millions of Vietnamese households have risen out of poverty, many have incomes very near the poverty line and remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty as a result of idiosyncratic shocks, such as job loss, accidents, or death or illness of a household member, or related economy-wide shocks including the effects of climate change on rainfall and temperatures, human and animal influenza pandemics, and impacts of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, it stressed.
Vietnam’s success has created new challenges, it went on to say. Among others are inequality in incomes and opportunities, persistent ethnic minority poverty and gap between the rich and the poor.
The report was made by the World Bank in cooperation with the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences./.
