Vietnam’s National Program Helps Reduce Poverty

Vietnam’s National Target Program for Socio-Economic Development in Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas for the period 2021 – 2030 has created positive changes, making important contributions to hunger eradication and poverty reduction, and promoting economic development in many regions throughout the country.

The goal of the program is to enhance socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas in a sustainable way to raise people’s income and gradually narrow the development gap between mountainous and lowland areas.

After three years of implementation, the lives of people in ethnic minority and mountainous areas are gradually changing positively. Essential infrastructure serving production and life is prioritized for investment to create an increasingly prosperous rural appearance.

Many traditional cultural values are preserved and promoted in association with tourism development.

In particularly difficult areas, the program has focused on developing socio-economic infrastructure facilities creating favorable conditions for people to access high-quality services, preserving and promoting traditional cultural identity, and improving the quality of human resources.

In addition, the program has introduced measures to support the development of production and livelihoods, creating motivation for mountainous and ethnic people.

Up to now, localities have implemented nearly 5,000 projects in ethnic minority and mountainous areas, supporting 489 households with residential land and 14,760 households with production land, building 116 reallocated areas and deploying 445 models to support production development along the value chain and 249 models of entrepreneurship and business start-up in ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

Thanks to that, the poverty rate in 2022 decreased by 3.4%, exceeding the assigned target.

Determining this as a “driving force” for comprehensive development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas, government and relevant sectors have simultaneously implemented the program in all localities and achieved encouraging achievements.

Yen Bai Province, which is home to more than 30 ethnic groups, accounting 57% of total population of 85,000 people, has issued many support policies to eliminate hunger, reduce poverty, and raise the people’s living standards.

During the last three years, the province has allocated over VND12 trillion ($500 million) for socio-economic development in ethnic communities and mountainous areas that focused on production, infrastructure construction, transportation network, education and health care service, poverty reduction and building new rural areas.

The poverty reduction work has achieved positive results with the average reduction rate of over 4% per year.

This year, the province aims to reduce the household poverty rate by 3.5% and the rate of near-poor households 1.22% compared to 2022.

Mu Cang Chai District, one of the most impoverished districts of Yen Bai, has implemented many projects providing residential land, housing, production land and clean water, and investing in essential infrastructure, sustainable agricultural and forestry production with a total investment capital of nearly VND75 billion ($3.1 million), of which the public capital is over VND43.5 billion ($1.8 million).

Ly A Lau’s family in Nam Khat Village, one of poorest households in the district, is an example of life changing thanks to the program.

Previously, his family lived in a dilapidated makeshift house.

Earlier this year, he was offered assistance worth VND50 million ($2,000) from the State budget to build a new house. Gathering other resources as well, his family built a new solid house that is a great motivation for his family to stabilize their life, increase production, and develop the household economy.

Ly A Lau said: “In the past, my family was very poor. Now, with support from the province and district to build a house and getting preferential loans, I have boldly invested in livestock and production that helps us stabilize our lives and take care of the children.”

Thap A Phenh, chairman of Nam Khat Commune, said that for households lacking livestock and housing, the program has brought important meaning to the people, motivating families to strive for production and economic development, contributing to hunger eradication and poverty reduction in the area.

In addition to the achievements, the province has encountered difficulties and obstacles in slow disbursement of capital. Solutions are needed to speed up the program implementation progress.

According to Do Quang Vinh, vice director of the provincial ethnic committee, currently, the total capital allocated by the Central Government is VND592 billion ($24.4 million) but only VND315 billion ($13 million) has been disbursed, reaching 28%.

Opportunities to escape poverty

The program implementation has helped thousands of poor and near-poor households and ethnic groups in Dak Lak Province access preferential capital to develop production, create jobs, increase income, and improve their lives.

The Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province has 130 communes in 15 districts, towns and cities in ethnic people and mountainous areas including 519 extremely difficult villages and hamlets benefiting from the program.

This year, the province’s poverty rate decreases by 1.75%, of which the rate of poor households among ethnic communities dropped by 3.5% compared to last year.

Cu Pui is a commune of Krong Bong District with population of over 15,000 people, of which the ethnic groups account for about 90%.

The land here is arid and the climate is harsh, so people face many difficulties.

Nguyen Minh Nghiep, the commune’s People’s Committee chairman, said that implementing the Government’s policy, the locality has coordinated with the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) to review and select poor households to offer soft loans.

So far, 128 households have been supported with loans according to Decree 28/2022/ND-CP with a total amount of more than VND6 billion ($248,000).

Giang Thi Cho, a resident in Ea Uol Hamlet, has more than one hectare of land that used to grow cassava, but the cultivated land has been eroded and degraded for many years so it is not productive anymore.

In late 2022, her family was offered a loan of VND50 million ($2,000) for changing crop.

She invested in 10,000 acacia trees.

After a year, the acacia trees grew well and brought her higher income.

In order for the capital to be effective, VBSP has coordinated with local authorities, organizations, associations and entrusted unions to review beneficiaries and loan needs.

Thereby, people can borrow capital suitable for their livelihoods, promote efficiency and create conditions for escaping poverty.

After more than a year of implementation, VBSP – Dak Lak branch, has disbursed more than VND58 billion ($2.4 million), with over 1,070 households accessing preferential capital, 96 households of which were supported to build and repair houses, 54 households were provided with production land, and 924 ones were supported to change jobs.

The capital has helped people expand production and improve their lives.

Thuong Van Diep, vice director of VBSP – Dak Lak branch, said that during the implementation, there are still some difficulties, especially the review of specific subjects eligible for assistance that are basically behind schedule.

In the coming time, the branch will try to speed up the pace, co-ordinate closely with units to review subjects eligible for the program and supplement and complete documents to disburse money as quickly as possible, said Diep.

In order to increase the effectiveness of the program, the People’s Committee of Dak Lak Province has proposed many solutions to be implemented in the coming time including the completion of necessary procedures to disburse program capital and the enhancement of investment for key projects.

The Government should review and adjust targets and roadmaps for implementing goals in a way that allows localities to choose urgent projects to deploy and ensure the roadmap and appropriate amount of allocated capital aiming at creating motivation and increasing the effectiveness of the program.

Challenges and shortcomings

Ha Viet Quan, chief of the program’s Co-ordination Office, said that this is one of the Government’s three current national target programs spending huge resources to ethnic minority areas.

After three years of implementation, although there are still limitations, difficulties and challenges, the program plays an important role in exploiting potentials for the socio-economic development of the areas.

The Party and Government have issued policies to prioritize resources as well as investment for the development of areas to ensure the goal of narrowing the gap between the mountainous areas and the lowlands, Quan said.

Localities encountered many difficulties and challenges because the program has many tasks and is deployed in a large area covering many fields from culture, health and education to national defense, agriculture and transportation.

Therefore, the first challenge is identifying the right beneficiaries of the policies. This takes a long time because the area is large and divided, said Quan.

The next challenge is to find legal documents by the government and related ministries and sectors instructing the implementation, because the program consists of 10 different projects and 14 sub-projects relating to 36 very large policy contents.

Besides, in reality in ethnic minority areas, the staff capability of grassroots government apparatus is relatively modest, while it must deploy a large amount of work and disburse a large amount of money. Therefore, local authorities face pressure during the implementation.

It is necessary to further decentralize for localities to create conditions for them to be proactive in implementing projects to suit the needs, characteristics, and actual situation of areas home to ethnic communities, Quan said.

Because the ethnic community areas are very different, the northern mountainous region is different from the Central Highlands and Southwest. There are even ethnic groups living in the same area but having very different socio-economic characteristics and cultural life, he said.

Therefore, decentralization needs a plan and roadmap to ensure all localities can implement it, he added.

(Asianews)