Great Achievements in New Rural Development

By 2025, Vietnam strives to have at least 50% of districts, towns and provincial cities meet new rural standards, with at least 20% qualifying as newly enhanced rural districts and model new-style rural districts.

 After 10 years, the program of New Rural Development has achieved "great, comprehensive and historic" results. By the end of 2020, the number of communes meeting the new rural standards exceeded the target by 12.4%. By July 2021, 64.6% of the communes met the new rural standards, 29% of the districts met the new rural standards, and 12 provinces having 100% of communes met new rural standards.

Imprint of new rural areas

According to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan, the Program has become a vibrant movement across the country. After 10 years of implementation, the Program has achieved important results, which, according to the Party and State leaders, are "great, comprehensive and historic".

Income per capital in rural areas in 2020 reached VND41.7 million/person/year, 1.7 times that of 2015 and 3.25 times that of 2010. The rate of multidimensionally poor households in rural areas in 2020 was about 7.1%, down 4.7% compared to 2016.

Referring to a number of new points of the Program for the 2021-2025 period, Minister Le Minh Hoan said the program, which was based on the principle “The new countryside is the foundation, agricultural restructuring is fundamental, the people are the subjects”, basically continued the tasks of the previous period and focuses on key ones. The Program for the 2021-2025 period focuses on implementing the following key tasks: supporting communes and districts to meet the new rural standards and improve the quality of the standards that have been met in a sustainable way; targeting that the whole country will no longer have communes that meet less than 15 standards and encouraging localities with favorable conditions to actively build model rural areas.

Besides, Minister Le Minh Hoan emphasized the need to focus on improving the efficiency of agricultural restructuring and rural economic development, specifically, improving the operational efficiency of agricultural cooperatives in association with value chain linkages; supporting start-ups and innovative businesses in restructuring the agricultural sector and developing rural economy; strongly implementing the One Commune One Product Program, and developing rural tourism.

Promoting digital transformation

The beneficiaries of the program are people, residential communities, cooperatives, businesses and socio-economic organizations in rural areas. The program includes 11 components: Improving the efficiency of management and implementation of new rural construction according to planning in order to improve socio-economic life in rural areas associated with the process of urbanization; developing basic socio-economic infrastructure to be synchronous and modern, ensuring rural-urban connectivity and regional connectivity; continuing to effectively carry out the restructuring of the agricultural sector and developing the rural economy; poverty reduction and sustainable social security, especially in ethnic minority areas, mountainous areas, coastal plains and islands. The program also includes improving the quality of education and health care for rural people; improving the quality of cultural life of rural people; preserving and promoting traditional cultural values in a sustainable way in association with the economic development of rural tourism; improving environmental quality, strengthening rural clean water supply system; building a bright-green-clean-beautiful and safe rural landscape; preserving and restoring traditional images and landscapes of the countryside; promoting and improving the quality of public administrative services; and promoting the digital transformation in agriculture and rural development toward building smart rural areas.

State budget allocation for the period 2020 - 2025

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in order to improve the efficiency of the implementation of the above contents, six key thematic projects/programs will be implemented to further improve the quality of life of rural people and solve pressing and existing problems in the construction of new rural areas that emerged after 10 years of implementation, including science and technology program for the construction of new rural areas; One Commune One Product (OCOP) Program; project on developing rural tourism in association with preserving and promoting traditional culture in the construction of the new countryside; project on the environment, hygiene, food safety and rural clean water supply; project on digital transformation in new rural construction, towards smart new countryside; project to improve the quality and efficiency of implementing security and order criteria in the construction of new rural areas.

The total mobilized resources for the implementation of the 2021-2025 period is expected to be about VND2.450 trillion, including Central budget capital of VND39,632 billion (accounting for 1.6%); local budget capital of about VND156,700 billion (accounting for 6.4%); integrated capital from the remaining two National Target Programs and other programs and projects about VND224,000 billion (accounting for 9%); capital mobilized outside the budget expected to be more than VND2 million billion (accounting for more than 83%), including Credit capital about VND1.79 million billion (accounting for 73%); enterprise capital about VND105,500 billion (accounting for 4.3%); and mobilized voluntary contributions of the people about VND139,300 billion (accounting for 5.7%).

Source: Vietnam Business Forum