Numbers of poor households in urban areas in Vietnam, especially in two big cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, have tended to rise in 2010, showed a report by two non-governmental organizations of the Oxfam and ActionAids. Oxfam and ActionAids made the report basing on a survey on Vietnam’s poverty situation for urban residents in 2010. The report found that the urban poverty rate fell by averaged 3.6% per year in the 2006-2010 period. By late 2008, poor households accounted for 13% of total national figures, down 1.8% against the previous year. The report also indicated that slow pace of poverty reduction in the country was resulted from rising prices of essential goods, natural disasters as well as the world economic downturn. More and more immigrants into big centers, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, has hiked the poverty rate in urban areas, the report said, elaborating that this group of population finds hard to get access to social services like education, healthcare and credit due to due to their low income and unstable jobs. Both Oxfam and ActionAids recommended a new way in calculating poverty rates in urban areas in order to offer better policies for poverty reduction in the Southeast Asian country. Vietnam targets to cut the poverty rate to between 4% and 5% by 2020, from the current rate of 9.45%, under the new poverty line expected to be applied from 2011, said the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA). (chinhphu.vn Dec 14, vneconomy.vn Dec 14)
