Five-year poverty reduction program summed up: Towards sustainability

Huynh Thi Nga, Vice Chairperson of the Provincial People’s Committee and Head of the SCPR, awarded certificates of merit to organizations

The summary report shows that in five years (2006-2010) the province has reduced from 54,485 to 38,500 poor families, getting 141.51 percent of the plan with three years (2006 – 2008) gaining a reduction of 26,251 poor families and two remaining years (2009-2010), in line with new poverty line, gaining a reduction of 28,234 poor households. Thus, the rare of poor households in late 2010 is 2.93 percent (exceeding the targets set by the Resolution for the 2006-2010 period i.e. below 4 percent)

The fact that 17 out of 17 poor communes has been decreased shows lives of the poor and infrastructure of poor regions have improved in many aspects. The average income of the poor, has risen by 493,000 dong/person/month in late 2010, a 2.82-fold increase compared to the early period. The quality of poverty reduction developed in a sustainable way. The Districts with high average annual reduction rates are Tan Phu (3.05%), Cam My (1.7%), Dinh Quan (1.68%) … Bien Hoa City alone has only 0.6 percent of poor households, which are the most difficult circumstances  left in all 3 periods.

The conference

Besides, 1000 billion dongs has been mobilized in five years to use for poverty reduction campaigns, of which 8 are supported from the Central budget, over 270 are aided from Social Policy Bank, more than 223.2 from the local budget, over 90 are raised from the community, 358.1 are collected from other socio-economic programs …

Despite of many shortcomings, this program has contributed to the economic growth and social development in the last five years all over the province.

With a large number of support programs, lives of ethnic minorities’ people in Tan Phu District have become better

The targets aimed for the next five-year period are reducing poor households by 1.5 percent annually. In 2011 alone, according to the Resolution of the Party’s Committee, this rate is 5 percent, indicating that the reduction must be at least 1.22 percent.  Also, it is essential to improve the quality of the poor’s lives, raise the average income of the poor by two times more than now, bring poor households out of poverty and help them to improve their fortunes. By 2015, the targets are to get remote, deep-lying or mountainous areas have essential infrastructure system and basic services to develop production, matching with other strong rural areas of the province. The subjects of the program are households below the poverty line set by the province, poor communes, difficult communes and especially difficult hamlets.

On this occasion, the Provincial People’s Committee awarded the certificate of merit to 104 organizations and 126 individuals with excellent performance in doing poverty-reduction work and 19 typical households which successfully got out of poverty

Reported by Nguyen Le, Translated by Minh Minh