Policy on poverty reduction to be amended

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh, Head of the Central Steering Committee on sustainable poverty reduction chaired an on-line meeting on April 23 with localities to review the work done in carrying out the policy on poverty reduction in the 2005-2012 stage, the results in 2013 and the orientation to the year 2015.

Representatives of localities, ministries and sectors believed that poverty reduction is the correct policy to give care to the people’s life, making a contribution to consolidating the people’s trust in the Party and the State.

The localities have deployed the poverty reduction programs in all areas of life such as the health examination and treatment, the support to poor students; the support of land for production and water supply; job training; the scientific and technological transfer; the support of houses and preferential credit and so on.

Thanks to all this, the rate of poor households has sharply reduced to 7.8% from 22%. A lot of bright spots in poverty reduction have been seen. A lot of investments have been made in education in the difficult areas, bringing about the long-term significance and the policy on health insurance and housing has helped a lot of poor households get out of poverty line. As a result, 531,000 poor households have now got their own houses nationwide.

To have better poverty reduction, the leaders of localities have proposed the Government to increase investment in poverty reduction, the integration of policies to focus on the resources and eradicate the procedures which are no longer necessary for implementation.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh said that the policies and regimes in this area have fundamentally gone into life and displayed their usefulness.

He stressed that in the past 5 years, even though the economy in the country has met with a lot of difficulties, the National Assembly and Government have to lower some economic norms, while the norms set for poverty reduction and social security have still been kept unchanged.

Dealing with the deployment of the policy on poverty reduction in recent time, Deputy prime Minister Vu Van Ninh requested the ministries, sectors and localities to implement poverty reduction in a comprehensive manner, but they have to determine the groups of objects such as the ethnic minority people so as to concentrate on poverty reduction.

On the other hand, the Deputy Prime Minister asked the ministries and sectors to design the policy packages on poverty reduction so that the poor people in each region can be able to select and benefit the policy without relying on the State.

To limit the lack of the resources when carrying out the policy, Deputy Prime Minister proposed the ministries, sectors and localities to be proactive to balance right from the design of the policy and the building of the sources of the budget to carry out poverty reduction in the medium term.

“It is necessary to guarantee the source of funding once the policies have been promulgated; if not, it will impact the people’s trust in the Party and the State” – Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh stressed. The Deputy Prime Minister asked the members of the Steering Committee to review the policy and regime so as to be able to promulgate it in time and follow and examine constantly the activities of localities in a bid to adjust at the quickest time. Experience should be shared among the localities so that the localities can learn from each other./.