Vietnam says cuts poverty rate faster than target
HANOI - Aid-reliant Vietnam said on Wednesday it has cut the poverty rate to less than 9 percent of the population, a year earlier than targeted. The communist country of 81 million had initially wanted to cut the rate to below 10 percent by 2005.
"The rate this year has already been reduced to below 9 percent," Nguyen Thi Hang, Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said at the launch of a report to review the national programme on poverty reduction. Vietnam has the fastest-growing economy in Southeast Asia, averaging 7 percent a year, and the government plans to reduce the poverty rate to below 7 percent in 2005, based on its current standard.
Anyone living in rural areas with monthly income of less than 100,000 dong ($6.4) is now considered poor in Vietnam, while the threshold for an urban poor resident is less than 150,000 dong ($9.5). Per capital income in Vietnam is about $450 a year. Hang said her ministry will ask the government to raise the poverty threshold in rural areas to 180,000 dong and between 230,000 and 250,000 dong for urban areas in the 2006-2010 plan."Going at the new threshold, Vietnam's poverty rate would be 26 percent to 27 percent in 2006, which is a challenge to us," she said.
The report, jointly conducted with the U.N. Development Programme, found not all the poor benefited from the programme on hunger eradication and poverty reduction while some wealthy families had instead received state investment for the poor.The report would be presented to donors for consideration, officials said.
The World Bank said international donors were likely to pledge about $2.8 billion in development aid to Vietnam in 2005, similar to this year's amount. ($1 = 15,736 dong)
Reuters - November 24, 2004
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