Mekong Region Debates New Poverty Reduction Programme 

The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) is consulting with officials and representatives from the poorest areas in the Mekong region on the design of the new National Targeted Programme for Poverty Reduction for the 2006-2010 period. The consultation, opened in An Giang province on March, 17, 2005, is the third one in a series of consultations on the draft document of the Programme.

Two similar consultations were organised in Dak Lak province and Hanoi with local officials and people from the Central Highlands and the North provinces, respectively. Another consultation meeting will be held in Yen Bai in mid April to gather opinions from Northern mountain provinces. The consultation series aims to seek opinions from officials and people in different regions of Vietnam on how the new programme would be designed and implemented so that it could best meet the needs of local people affected by poverty. This is also a good opportunity to provide additional guiding information for provinces to start preparing their respective poverty reduction plans for the 2006-2010 period.

Vietnam, in the last fifteen years, has been very successful in poverty reduction. According to a report of the United Nations in Vietnam – “Closing the Millennium Gap”, poverty rates in Vietnam were reduced to some 29 per cent in 2002, down from well over 60 per cent in 1990. The National Target Programme for Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) and the Programme for Socio-economic Development of poorest communes (known as 135 Programme) have made considerable contributions to the success, a UN Development Programme-supported independent evaluation of the two programmes noted.  

The evaluation report also highlighted the need for the two programmes to improve in increasing people’s participation, developing a participatory monitoring and evaluation system, better targeting mechanisms and strengthening local capacity to ensure effective implementation. Such improvements would be key to ensuring that the new programmes would be able to help reducing the persistent poverty prevalence in the mountainous and ethnic minority areas as well as reverting the trends of increasing disparity in poverty across the country.

By completion in 2010, the two programmes are expected to contribute substantively to realising the strong commitment of the Government of Vietnam in reducing the proportion of poor households from 26 per cent in 2005 (according to new poverty threshold to be applied this year) to about 15 per cent by 2010, or each year, more than 300,000 households will be lifted out from poverty.

• Lan Anh