Consensuses to Realise Millennium Development Goals

Vietnam has made quick progresses in poverty reduction by its strong economic development, Mr John Hendra, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Vietnam, affirmed at a seminar held by UNDP and ADB in Hanoi on March 1 and 2.

 

According to the UNDP report, Vietnam’s achievements in realising the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are admirable. The poverty rate was reduced to 19 per cent, the percentage of people with daily incomes of less than US$1 decreased considerably, the literacy rate was improved. The achievements were very impressive in a poor country like Vietnam. The Vietnamese Government added more investment to rural infrastructure, supplied clean water and hygiene utilities for million households.

 

However, like other countries, Vietnam is encountering difficulties on the road to accomplish the all MDGs in 2015. First of all, the hunger and poverty is threatening people in places with unfavourable geographic conditions and minority ethnic people. The poorest places are northwest, northern central and central highland regions. Although the population in these areas account for only 14 per cent of the country’s total, the poverty rate contributes to 29 per cent.

 

Besides, millions of Vietnamese people are living on incomes just above the poverty line a little. More than 10 million people are easy to become impoverished if an unfavourable economic shock takes place. In addition, benefits of the reform process are not distributed equally among the society. “For example, the growth of the Vietnamese stock market in the past years makes the rich richer and the poor is not benefited from this development,” Mr Kim Hak Su, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), said.

 

Based on the assessments and analyses, the United Nations released recommendations and basic targets for Vietnam’s next five-year social and economic development plan. Accordingly, Vietnam needs to reduce the poverty rate to less than 5 per cent. By 2010, the number of poor households will not exceed 10 per cent of a province or city’s total. Especially, Vietnam needs to reduce the undersize child rate to 25 per cent by 2010 and no province and city has an undersized child ratio of over 30 per cent.

 

Additionally, official and unofficial fees for education at primary and secondary education levels will be eradicated in the coming time. These fees are increasing and the rich pay more for better education for their children. To ensure sufficiency expenditures for the healthcare service provision, the spending must be equal to at least 2.5 per cent of the GDP. Healthcare service will take up at least 50 per cent of expenditures for the health sector by 2010.