Lawmakers on Wednesday adopted a resolution on investment policy for the national target program on new-style rural area building for the 2021-2025 period.

Under the resolution, the State will allocate VND 1,963 trillion (US$ 84 billion) to implement the national target program over the next five years. The total funding includes VND 39,632 billion from the central budget while the rest will be contributed by local authorities.

The program targets to raise the rate of communes meeting new-style rural area criteria to at least 80 percent by 2025.

At least 60% of villages and hamlets in especially disadvantaged communes in border, mountainous, coastal and island areas is expected to fulfill the aforesaid criteria.

As of June 2021, Viet Nam has 5,343 out of 8,267 communes meeting the new-style rural area standards, equivalent to 64.63%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Of these, 351 communes met the standards of advanced new-style rural areas and 38 communes met the standards of model rural areas.

As many as 192 district-level units in 51 provinces and centrally-run cities were recognized by the Prime Minister for completing the tasks and standards of new-style rural areas. In addition, 12 provinces have 100% of communes meeting the standards of new-style rural areas.

Now, 19 criteria are used to assess the development and improvement of communes in terms of infrastructure, irrigation, electricity, environment, income, education, healthcare, social security and culture. The criteria would be adjusted to increase decentralization and increase flexibility when assessing localities’ performance in building new-style rural areas.

The changed criteria were also expected to encourage disadvantaged communes/districts to continue seeking recognition between 2021 and 2025

The national target program on building new-style rural areas in 2016-2020 completed its set targets. Over VND 2,110 trillion VND (US$ 90.44 billion at current exchange rate) was mobilized from all sources to implement the program.