Vietnam is among 38 countries that have fulfilled the millennium development goals (MDG) for poverty reduction, chalking up success ahead of the 2015 deadline, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in its report released on June 12. The country has already succeeded in achieving both the MDG of halving the proportion of hungry people and World Food Summit (WFS) goal of reducing by half the absolute number of undernourished people in the periods of 1990-1992 and 2010-2012, the report said. FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva praised the countries’ successes, urging them to maintain the momentum to completely eradicate hunger in keeping with the Zero Hunger Challenge initiative launched last year by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon. On June 16, FAO will honor the 38 nations that reached the anti-hunger targets in a ceremony in Rome, Italy. At the Q&A session of the National Assembly on June 13, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) said that it is necessary to adjust poverty line to make it suitable to the real situation. Vietnam’s poverty rate dropped by 2.12% in 2012 against the previous year, exceeding the National Assembly’s earlier set target of 2%. By end-2012, the national poverty rate touched 9.64% and the number of hunger households fell to 27.6% against 2011. Especially, poverty rate in poor districts in Vietnam decreased sharply to 7.02%, lower than the preset goal by 4%. So far, up to 2.1 million households are deemed poor and 1.4 million near-poor, accounting for 9.46 and 6.75% of the national population, according to the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. (Cong An Nhan Dan – People’s Police June 14 p1, Thoi Bao Ngan Hang – Banking Times June 14 p2)
