Dinh market at Vinh Quang 2 hamlet, Phuoc Son commune, Tuy Phuoc district was built at the expense of the state budget.

The most notable result is quite significant reduction of poor households, says Mr. Hai. Rate of the poor households in Binh Dinh was 19.66% in the end of 2005, in comparison to the end of 2010 at 7.23%. Moreover, career training and job creation for the poor also reap encouraging results. More than 3,392 poor people were trained and got jobs. Unemployment rate at urban areas decreased from 5.1% in 2006 to 4% in 2010. Total working time in rural areas increased from 76% in 2006 to 80% in 2010.

Policies on support for the poor people and households were improved. 224,695 turns of the poor households were provided credits with preferential interests; 871,593 turns of the poor people were granted health insurances; 7,775 of the poor households (including 1,450 minority ethnic households) were helped to build houses or offered houses; 121,000 poor people got jobs; about 113,813 poor or minority ethnic students enjoyed school fee reduction and exemption program, were covered part of studying costs.

Infrastructure at extremely poor communes or coastal, islandish communes were improved, particularly works for goods-oriented production so that living standard of the local people was gradually getting higher. Average income per capita by 2010 reached 18 million VND/person/year.

The above results from the program are driving forces of Binh Dinh’s socio-economic development in the next few years.

Can you please tell us what difficulties the program endured during its implementation?

Besides the results gained, the program still had its shortcomings. At some of mountainous communes, the rates of the poor households were still high. Many of the households fell into poverty again due to unfavourable geographical, weather conditions, lack of jobs available and unstable jobs, low incomes. The rates of poverty reduction were uneven among the communes and the districts which had the same conditions. Some districts like An Nhon and Phu Cat had great potentialities of fast socio-economic development but their rates of the poor households were still high. 

Few local governments didn’t thoroughly understand about the poverty reduction and hunger eradication, leading to ineffective guidance and implementation. Communication campaigns to raise awareness of the poor people weren’t carried out to the very end and didn’t apply the poor people centred approach to evoke their self-reliance. Hence, few of the poor people were heavily relied on the state’s assistance.

Moreover, government officials at grassroots levels weren’t competent enough to quickly acquire skills, professional or technological knowledge. Consequently, they couldn’t transfer knowledge of new technologies to the people.

What are targets of the program in the next 5 years (2011-2015)? What are proposed actions to reach the targets?

The program aims to create sustainable jobs for the poor labourers, double per capita average income of the poor households and increase per capita average income of the poor districts at least 3 times in comparison to 2010. By 2015, the rate of the poor households in Binh Dinh will reduce to under 8%, at average rate of 2% on annual basis (according to current poverty line). The rate in the extreme poor districts, communes and hamlets is expected at 4-5%.

Basic services like housing, water supply, healthcare, education, vocational training, cultural activities, free of charge legal assistance for the poor, particularly minority ethnic people at the extremely poor localities, will be ensured. Rate of trained rural labourers will reach over 60%.

Main proposed methods include improvement of the campaign on the poverty reduction and hunger eradication; integration of socio-economic development into fast, sustainable poverty alleviation and job creation; concentration of resources for prioritized projects for the extremely poor communes, the low income communes, the poor districts and poor households. 

• Van Trang