Vietnam Spends $4B on Social Security Programs in 2011

The Vietnamese government spent roughly VND84 trillion ($4 billion) on social security programs in 2011, rising 20% from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said. The funding was used to support low-income earners and poor households amid increased power prices and minimum salary hikes and other relevant regimes. The government also allocated nearly 65,000 tons of rice and VND662 billion from the national reserves for famine relief in the areas hit by natural disasters and diseases last year. In 2011, economic uncertainties, high inflation plus grave consequences of natural disasters made lives of ordinary people, especially the poor, more difficult. Thus, the government adopted Resolution No. 11 on socio-economic management, which spelled out tightened financial policies, but focused on social welfare.  Last year, over $150 million were allocated to social welfare, including aids, subsidies of health insurance, tuition fees and housing and preferential loans for the poor, said Ngo Truong Thi, head of the Office for Poverty Reduction Program Coordination of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA). Thanks to good polices on social security and poverty reduction, living conditions of the poor have been ensured fundamentally in recent years, Thi attributed. In 2012, the government set a target of lowering the poverty rate to 10% from 12% in the previous year, he added. (Ha Noi Moi – New Hanoi Jan 31)