Vietnam gives priority to fight against poverty
Ha Noi, Dec. 4 (VNA) -- Viet Nam will give first priority to programmes on hunger elimination and poverty reduction in the years to come, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Cong Tan has affirmed.
Mr. Tan was addressing the international forum for the nationally-targeted programme on hunger eradication, poverty reduction and employment held by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in Ha Noi on Dec. 3.
He said hunger elimination and poverty reduction will be a key target of Party and State development policies.
Tan noted although the hunger rate has dropped by 33 percent over the past 10 years, the current hunger rate remains alarming.
The latest figures released by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs put the number of poor households according to new criteria at 2.8 million, or 17.2 percent of the population.
Early this year, the Government decided to spend VND 22,580 (USD 1.7 billion) on a five-year programme to reduce poverty and improve employment rates in hope of reducing the rate of poor households to 10 percent by 2005, with 300,000 households escaping from poverty every year.
The forum heard that the programme has provided capital investment for 118,000 households to take up a sedentary life and to nearly 40,000 others to resettle in new economic zones.
It helped arrange stable households for 23,543 migrant families and train one million poor people in agricultural and seafood production.
In addition, the programme granted more than 1.2 million health insurance cards to poor households and provided two million others with free health treatment.
At the forum, the Deputy PM also appealed to international and non-government organisations for support for hunger and poverty programmes in Viet Nam.
"We highly appreciated the assistance of donor nations, international organisations and NGO to the global poverty reduction in which priorities have been given to developing countries including Viet Nam," he said.
Over the past five years, the State spent more than VND 15,000 billion on programmes aimed at ending hunger.--VNS/VNA
