The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved $100 million in additional financing for an ongoing poverty reduction project in Vietnam that helps improve living standards for poor people in six northwest provinces, the country’s poorest region, according to the bank’s press release. The increased financing is aimed to improve livelihood of people in Hoa Binh, Son La, Dien Bien, Lai Chau, Lao Cai and Yen Bai. The additional financing will improve the capacity of local governments and communities, increase access to investments that boost productivity, strengthen commune investment planning, and enhance community links to markets and business innovations. “We share the government of Vietnam’s strong desire to reduce poverty through the community-driven development approach embedded in this project,” said Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank’s Country Director in Vietnam. The northwest tops regions for the rate of poor households with 25%, followed by the northeast with 15%. Dien Bien takes the lead with the poverty rate of 35.22%, Lai Chau 27.22%, Son La 27.01%, and Yen Bai 25.38%, data of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs said in 2013 showed. Vietnam has around 5.2 million poor people, or 5.7% of the country’s total population, weakening its competitiveness and slowing the economic growth as the country needs to pay a large amount of money for poverty reduction. Vietnam said that it spent an estimated VND864 trillion ($41.14 billion) on fighting against poverty during 2005-2012. The programs over the years benefit 531,000 poor households, reducing the poverty rate to 7.8% in 2013 from 22% in 2005. But it is believed that a large amount of the annual spending has gone to feed the administration system instead. Earlier last month, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that the country needs to make efforts to maintain sustainable poverty reduction as improving people’s livelihood is one of key measures to keep the country’s economic growth and ensuring good social welfare for all walks of life, especially disadvantaged people as a way to promote the development. (Phap Luat Viet Nam – Vietnam Law Mar 2 p2, www.worldbank.org [1] Feb 27).
