Poverty is declining but in an unsustainable manner while the gap between the rich and the poor has been widened, requiring authorities to quickly craft new multi-dimensional poverty standards in the 2021-2025 period, said Deputy PM Vu Duc Dam.

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Deputy PM Vu Duc Dam, who is the Head of the Central Steering Committee for the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction in the 2016-2020 period, made the statement while presiding over the body's meeting to sum up poverty reduction work in the first half and define tasks for the rest of the year on July 14 in Ha Noi.

Striving to bring poverty rate under 3% 

Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs Le Van Thanh reported that so far VND 22.8 trillion (US$991 million) from the State budget has been allocated for the implementation of social welfare and poverty reduction policies.

Over VND10 trillion from the State budget has been earmarked for carrying out the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction this year.

As of June 30, the Viet Nam Bank for Social Policies offered loans worth over VND 18.6 trillion to 423,000 poor and near-poor households. 

As of late 2019, Viet Nam housed 8,464 poor households in 40 provinces and cities, down 36.26% against 2017.   

As scheduled, poverty rate would be cut from 3.78% in 2019 to less than 3% at an annual average rate of 1-1.5%. 

Regarding support for people suffering from the Covid-19 outbreak, local authorities have approved a list of 15.8 million people eligible for receiving a total funding of VND 17.5 trillion in which over VND 11.2 trillion has been disbursed for more than 11 million people, including over 7 million poor and near-poor households. 

Rising out of poverty

Minister of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affair Ngoc Dung reported that the ministry would submit new multi-dimensional poverty lines for the country and children and the National Target Program on poverty reduction and social welfare in the 2021-2025 period to the Government.

Some members of the Steering Committee assessed that although the poverty rates are on the decline, but uneven. The rate of poor households remains high in several mountainous provinces, especially in the northern mountainous and Central Highlands regions.

They highlighted the necessity to specify sustainable poverty goals in annual and periodical socio-economic development plan, and take into account specific conditions in each region when designing poverty reduction policies.

The Deputy PM tasked ministries, agencies and localities to approve the National Target Program on sustainable poverty reduction and social welfare for the 2021-2025 period, and quickly re-arrange administrative units at communal and district level for 2019-2021 for the effective implementation of sustainable poverty reduction policies and programs./.