With over 2,000 traditional craft villages, Vietnam has huge potential for production scale and variety of products, attracting attention of international handicraft and fine arts products markets. The program of green production and trade which is underway will contribute to increase jobs and income for poor laborers in the countryside.
The rapid development of craft villages is among the Vietnamese government’s tasks to boost the economic growth, reduce the unemployment rate especially in rural areas and increase exports. For the situation, the Trade Promotion Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (Viettrade) and the Vietnam Handicraft Exporters Association (Vietcraft) joined hands to carry out a program namely “Green Production and Trade”. The US$4 million program, funded by the MDG Achievement Fund, aims to increase incomes and employment opportunities for crafts raw materials growers and collectors and for grassroots handicrafts, home products and furniture producers.
The program started in 2010 and lasts to 2012, expecting to provide 1.35 million jobs with the participation of 50 firms in Hanoi and neighboring localities. It also targets about 4,800 poor farming and crafts producing households in the four northern provinces of Vietnam: Phu Tho, Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa and Nghe An. The program will focus on the five value chains, comprising bamboo and rattan, sericulture; sea grass; lacquer ware; and handmade paper. Over 40 per cent of households getting benefits from the program are poor ones in accordance with the national poverty line.
In addition, the program is also towards about 1,400 ethnic minority people (accounting for 30 per cent), mainly Thai, Muong and H’mong. About 70 per cent of beneficiaries of the program are women because almost all of main laborers in craft villages and handicraft companies are female. For that reason, the program will indirectly help to realize the MDG goals on poverty elimination, gender equality and development sustainable environment Vietnam has committed to the world.
Besides, the joint program will support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to get access to cleaner production technologies (helping to reduce usage of toxic chemicals, wastes and environmental pollution). It will provide the SMEs with advanced technologies and new designs with better quality. The program also introduces appropriate labor standards and ways to improve working conditions towards productivity and competitiveness. In addition, the program will stimulate entrepreneurship at grassroots level, strengthen business skills, life empowering skills and group formation.
According to the program’s research, currently the five value chains targeted by the program are facing many difficulties, dearth of raw materials, lack of knowledge, inadequacy of farming extension services, shortage of clean production skills, sustainable designs and product development, lack of basic business management skills, poor working conditions, insufficient support services and inability to search and analyze commercial information. However, these difficulties will be stamped out by activities of the joint program supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the International Trade Centre (ITC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). This program is carried out in the framework of the One-UN Plan where Vietnam is one of the eight One-UN pilot countries.
Nguyen Mai
Vietnamese
