Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Viet Nam News, September 13, 2005

HA NOI — Vietnam has continued to improve its place on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, HDI.

This year’s index shows that sustained economic growth has propelled Vietnam’s human development ranking to 108 out of the 177 countries listed.It was at 112 in 2004.

The HDI, which combines indicators of economic growth with the provision of education and health care, measures a country’s long-term progress in human development.It was published with the yearly Human Development Report, one week before world leaders, including Vietnam’s Vice President Truong My Hoa, start their three-day World Summit at the UN headquarters in New York, today.

The summit will provide a crucial opportunity to review progress toward the Millennium Development, MDGs, set by the General Assembly in September 2000.

UNDP resident representative in Vietnam, Jordan Ryan, described it as a valuable report published at a critical time.

"It tells us that business will not be enough to meet the MDGs," he said.

"While Vietnam has seen tremendous success in poverty reduction, significant challenges remain.
"Vietnam needs to sustain and accelerate poverty reduction by paying even more attention to improving the living conditions of its poorest."But Vietnam was expected to meet its MDGs by the set date of 2015.

The report applauds Vietnam for halving 1990 poverty rates; reducing child and neo-natal mortality rates and reinforcing the link between economic growth and poverty reduction.
Vietnam, at 21.2 per cent, ranks 47th among 103 developing countries for which the UNDP calculates a poverty index.

Its gender-related index gives Vietnam a value of 0.707 or 83rd in the standings.
It puts Vietnam ahead of China in reducing child mortality.

Jordan said Vietnam was making significant progress in implementing the MDGs but needed to further reduce the rate of malnourished children.

It also needed to pay more attention in distributing budget revenue to communes so as to switch from country-oriented MDGs to locality-oriented MDGs.

The report praises Vietnam as a country that has achieved growth with equity. "Anybody questioning whether income distribution matters might reflect on the fact that the poorest 10 per cent of Brazilians are poorer than their counterparts in Vietnam, a country with a far lower average income," says the report’s lead author, UNDP Human Development Report Office director Kevin Watkins.

But extreme examples of inequality are noted.

"A single hospital visit costs 40 per cent of the monthly income of people in the poorest 20 per cent of the Vietnamese population," the report says.

The amounts spent for household health have plunged 3 million people into poverty.

The report identifies what it calls the "perverse taxation" of trade by the world’s poorest countries.
US import duty for countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh is about 10 times higher than for most countries in the European Union, it says.

Price distortions from export subsidies also have a direct impact on smaller producers.
Rice grown in the US at $415 a ton was exported at $275 a ton between 2002 and 2003, forcing rival rice exporters such as Thailand and Vietnam to adjust to this unfair competition.

The report calls on donor countries to deliver more aid and for donor and developing countries to reduce transaction costs to increase the effectiveness of the aid.

UNDP has published the global report and index each year since 1990.

It provides the latest human development statistics and addresses major issues of global concern.
Prepared by an independent team, it does not necessarily reflect the views of the UNDP or the United Nations.

This year’s report titled, International Co-operation at a Crossroads: Aid, trade and Security in an Unequal World, calls for swift and dramatic changes in global aid, trade and security policies to fulfill the promises made at the 2005 Millennium Summit. — VNS