Reducing rural poverty in Vietnam: issues, policies, challenges

Vietnam still has about 9 million poor people living under the poverty line. This remaining group is harder to reach than the group ten or twenty years ago. They rely on agriculture, live in remote mountainous areas with very limited access to modern infrastructure, education and government, and international aids, have low education levels and skills. Their chance of getting out of poverty is even worse than the past as Vietnam continues to modernize the economy and thus they will be left even further behind.

In order to eradicate poverty in Vietnam, the government needs to improve labor productivity, keep investing in infrastructure to create more and better jobs, especially for the export-oriented manufacturing industry. It is also recommended to target poor households more intensively with a combination of changing farmland use towards profitable crops, strengthening land user rights, providing microfinance, improving skills while at the same securing their subsistence. Most important of all is to reform the education system for equal opportunity of poor and non-poor, preparing the young generations for off-farm opportunities which offer more stable income.