US$2.2b needed for poverty reduction

Vietnam needs US$2.2 billion, or 33.754 trillion dong for its poverty reduction strategy from now to 2010, minister of Labour and War Invalid, Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Hang said at the workshop on cooperation between donors and non-governmental organisations in accelerating the hunger alleviation and poverty reduction in Vietnam in Hanoi on March 29.
Also, according to Hang, this amount of money is not included other relevant projects such as the government run Programme 135, 186 and 173. Of which, the central budget source estimates to disburse 26.6% of capital, raised credits accounts for 56.3%, local budgets hold 11.5%, capital raised from the community (except credits) accounts for 5% of total capital and capital from international organisations is 6.5% of total money.
Most representatives from international organisations highly valued Vietnam?s attempts in expediting poverty reduction.
Senator Patricia Crossin from Australia said, ?We have been very impressed by the focus on poverty reduction of the Vietnamese government at the central level and by the people at the local level, which the Word Bank supports in many of its projects.?
The aim of the hunger alleviation and poverty reduction task to 2010 is reduce the rate of poor households from 26% to 15%, improving living standards for the poor, step by step narrowing the gap on incomes and living standards between the rich and poor, urban and rural, amongst economic regions.
However, according to Ronald Klaus, chief representative of the World Bank in Vietnam, to succeed this target, there is a need to set up an authorised system to gradually improve standard of living for the poor based on the international poverty standard of US$1 per day. The point is developing the education sector because this is the most important thing in comparison with every the programme.
In addition, Klaus said that Vietnam has to face and deal with emigrations by the poor people from rural areas to big cities, which results in the situation where they are not entitled to benefits from hunger alleviation and poverty reduction programmes because the government can only allocate the budget based on the official number of poor population.
?The government must focus on places where poor people are living most to create a sustainable economic development thereby. We should not leave others behind too far,? added Klaus.
As Dr Myoung-Ock Ahn from Korea said, ?human resource development, education, health and women?s livelihoods, is vitally important for sustainable poverty reduction.?

 

Category: Legal