HANOI, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction for 2016-2020, which aims to cut the rate of poverty among households nationwide by 1-1.5 percent each year.
At the same time, the program targets to reduce the poverty rate among ethnic minority households by 3-4 percent a year.
Together with poverty reduction, Vietnam is trying to increase income per capita of people living under poverty line by 1.5 times by 2020 compared to that at the end of 2015, reported Vietnam's state-run news agency VNA on Monday.
Specifically, the number of districts which are extremely poor will be reduced by half by 2020 while that of extremely poor communes and villages should decrease by 20-30 percent.
In order to realize the goal, the country will pour investment into socio-economic infrastructure in poor areas, thus improving living conditions and access to jobs of local residents.
Accordingly, between 80-90 percent of communes nationwide will have concrete roads, some 60-70 percent should meet national standards on health care, and all 100 percent must have schools from kindergarten to high school levels to meet local children's study needs.
Meanwhile, around three-quarters of households nationwide will have access to hygienic water supply for daily use.
The program will provide vocational training and job orientation education for 20,000 workers from poor or ethnic minority backgrounds by 2020.
Total investment is estimated at nearly 48.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (around 2.1 billion U.S. dollars), to be sourced from the state and local budgets, the private sector and donations, among others.
According to statistics by the Central Steering Committee for Sustainable Poverty Reduction, the rate of poor and near-poor households across Vietnam stands at 15.1 percent.
