Peter Chaudry, a representative of the United Nations (UN) in Vietnam, urged the country to build a poverty reduction program for the 2011-2020 period at a conference in Hanoi on May 25, the government said on its website. The program must be attached to the national 2011-2020 Socio-economic Development Strategy to build up new rural areas and a social security strategy, he added. Experts at the meeting shared the same view with the UN official, suggesting the introduction of a new poverty line for the program implementation. Each locality will build and stipulate its own poverty line loosely based on the country’s common poverty line. The Draft 2011-2020 Poverty Reduction Program will continue to seek more ideas from experts as well as the government in June and July, said Bui Si Loi, deputy head of the National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs. Vietnam cut the poverty rate to 11% in 2009 from 58.1% in 1993 and targets to reduce the rate of poor households to less than 9.5% this year, said an official from the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs at the conference.
