Tough Challenge in Narrowing the Rich & Poor Gap

600 households of ten communes in nine provinces nationwide have participated in the group discussion, in-depth interview and interview according to questionnaire on the poverty reduction process in Vietnam. This programme is co-organised by Oxfam GB, Oxfam Hongkong and ActionAid Vietnam between April 2007 and Jannuary 2008.

 

According to this report, motives to reduce poverty in recent years are to accelerate goods production, improve infrastructure system, improve capacity to approach the market and hired labour, better education system and medical care as well as expand credit approach. Result from the field work shows that poverty has been reduced compared to ten years earlier but the poverty rate is still very high in mountainous communes and remote areas. In many localities, on average, there are around two poor households out of three ones. Though the current poverty situation is better than that of three and five years ago, if assessment is just based on income criteria, poverty is not fully assessed. For many poor people, quality of their meals is very low and poor in nutrition. In addition, poverty reduction rate seems to be slower in the near future since the poorest and most disadvantaged people are encountering big obstacles.

 

The survey points out big differences in the poverty rate and incomes among different ethnic groups living in the same commune. Although different groups are subject to the same conditions as climate, topography, and water source, their incomes and poverty rates differ. There exists a trend that the Kinh group has the lowest poverty rate while the Khmer, Tay, Thai and Ede groups have the average poverty rate and groups of Van Kieu, Raglai, Kh’mu and H’Mong have the highest poverty rate. Applying knowledge of technology and intensive cultivation, approaching market and education, effectively using capital and non-agricultural labour and using Vietnamese language are key factors which lead to diffirence in poverty rates among ethnic groups.

 

The survey result also reveals that there exists a close correlation between effective production capacity and poverty escape as well as ability to approach the market and poverty situation. Human resource is an important factor which decides the economic condition of people in the rural area. Besides, agricultural promotional services are usually judged to be of low quality since not due attention gets paid to demands of the ethnic groups which are not used to speaking Vietnamese. Last but not least, it is necessary to have a comprehensive social sponsoring system.

 

Though the State has many specific policies for the poor, efficiency of such policies is still limited. Even places which gets investments in the infrastructure system but lack conditions catering for farming production (irrigation system, cultivation means and technical support), the poorest people still find it difficult to improve their life quality.

 

This report emphasises differences between group of households with good income and group of poorer households. Since land favourable for cultivation is lacked, poor people meet difficulties in farming production. Policies which support materials for production in terms of price still do not find their way to the poor. The tie among processing enterprises, trading enterprises and farming production enterprises is still weak, which fails to help the poor take full advantage of new markets given the context in which Vietnam is a WTO member. A certain number of poor and close-to-poor people do not use capital effectively to increase their income. When approaching education, health care services and other services get improved, almost all people with good income enjoy the most benefit. The poor still meet difficulty and disadvantages in making the best of opportunities from new policies and programmes in order to improve their life.

 

When the poverty reduction gets adjusted in 2006, the poorest group encounter more and more obstacles in benefiting from policies in support of poverty reduction, which forces them to run more severe risk of falling deeper into the poverty circle. The group of close-to-poor people are also easy to be hurt when facing risks. Neither belonging to the poor group or group with good income, the group of close-to-poor people run into difficult in applying for credit allocated for the poorest or applying for commercial credit. This is the same with education and health care services.

 

According to this report, inflation exerts a large pressure upon efforts to reduce poverty during the past year. The “price scissors” between selling price of products and purchasing price of necessary food and foodstuffs, materials and agricultural services is volatile. This situation casts negative influence on economic stability of households and points out challenges to an economy in transition period. The current global financial crisis combined with high inflation Vietnam suffers during 2008 really threaten achieved endeavours to reduce poverty during the past time.

 

Another threat which needs to be paid attention to and closely monitored is climate change. Vietnam is seen as one of the nations which can possibly suffer the most influences worldwide since it has a long coast, an economy dependent on agriculture and fairly low growth level. The forecasted climate change in the future shows that millions of Vietnamese citizens run the risk of facing unfavourable weather, increasing sea level and more regular floods and droughts. In order to adapt to climate change, good capacity is required. Thought the Government of Vietnam becomes more and more aware of threats from climate change that the country is supposed to encounter, there are currently very few programmes which focus on analysing the social votality and ways to adapt to climate change in the 21st century in order to protect the poorest people.