The rate of poor households throughout the country is expected to drop to 2.75% by the end of this year, which means an average decrease of 1.43% over the past five years, meeting the target assigned by the National Assembly (NA).

Prime Minister speaks at the event

The aforementioned figure was reported during a virtual national conference held on December 11 to review the poverty reduction work in the 2016-2020 period. 

Among attendants were Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, who heads the Central Steering committee for the National Target Program on sustainable poverty reduction during 2016-2020.

Implementing the NA’s Resolution No. 76 in 2014 on accelerating the realization of sustainable poverty reduction goals until 2020, the NA and the Government have prioritized many resources to implement sustainable poverty reduction in the period of 2016-2020, while assigning stable resources to localities to proactively implement the work and creating conditions to help the poor improve their incomes and access to basic social services such as health, education, housing, clean water, sanitation and information.

It is expected that the poverty rate in poor districts will decrease to about 24% by the end of this year, while eight out of 64 poor districts will be lifted out of extreme difficulties. In addition, 32 districts will escape from the list of poor districts, meeting the set target.

As of June 30, 2020, the total outstanding loans of policy credit programs by the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies stood at more than VND219.5 trillion (US$9.52 billion), an increase of over VND77 trillion (US$3.34 billion) compared to the end of 2015.

Lending interest rates decreased to 6.6% a year for poor households, 7.92% for the near-poor households and 8.25% for those having escaped from poverty.

With the Government having approved a master project on converting the poverty measurement method from unidimensional to multidimensional to be applied for the 2016-2020 period, many poor districts and communes have so far have been invested to upgrade infrastructure and cultural, educational and health institutions, thereby facilitating economic development and ensuring people’s spiritual lives.

In the face of difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government issued Resolution No. 42 and the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 15 on measures and policies to support people in difficulty earlier in April.

Localities have approved a list of more than 16 million beneficiaries with a total budget of VND17.5 trillion (US$756.62 million). To date, over VND12.43 trillion (US$539.14 million) has been disbursed.

However, there remain shortcomings in the sustainable poverty reduction work that need addressing in the coming time.

Lessons learnt, experiences, difficulties and obstacles will be discussed at the national virtual conference reviewing poverty reduction efforts during 2016-2020 aiming to promote the achievements and clearly identify shortcomings and reasons to overcome.

This will contribute significantly to making the work of reducing poverty and ensuring social security more effective and fruitful in the years to come./.