HCM City Raises Poverty Standards for 2016-2020

The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has raised standards of poor and near-poor households, which will be applied during 2016-2020, with new criteria on income and ability to access to basic services. According to the new standards, a household is classified as poor when it’s annual income per capita is under VND21 million ($934.3) while the near-poor one has an income per capita between VND21 million and VND28 million. Lack of access to five basic public services including education and training, healthcare, jobs and social insurance, living conditions and information is also used to grade who are poor or near poor. Earlier, an annual income per capita of under VND16 million was set as the standard poverty line while those earned between VND16 million and VND21 million a year were named near-poor. The 2015 standards categorized 9,905 families in the city as poor who accounted for 0.5% of total households and 35,117 others as near-poor, or 1.79% of total households. Under the new poverty lines, total poor households in the city are calculated at over 59,000. The new standards will help the city build suitable social welfare policies and map out coherent socio-economic policies during the period. (http://en.dangcongsan.vn/ Jan 9)