For the last decade Viet Nam have gained significant achievements both in economic
growth and poverty reduction. The GDP growth for 2000- 2010 period has been
7.2%1
, despite the high reduction of the GDP growth in 2008 and 2009 because of the
global crisis impacts. Income per capita has been raised from USD 402 by 2000 to
USD 1064 by 2009. Vietnam has been moving to a middle income country.
2
The poverty reduction achievements have been very remarkable with the poverty
incidence rate reduced from 58.1% in 1993 to 28.9 percent in 2002, and to 14.5% by
2008
3
. For the same period the food poverty rate has been declined from 24% to
6.9%. The poverty gap has also declined substantially, from an estimated 18.4% in
1993 to 3.5% in 2008.
4
The percentage of the population with less than USD 1 dollara-day
in purchasing power parity (PPP) has been reduced from 39.9 percent in 1993
to less 5% in 2006 and 4.1% in 2008. Using the approach applied by MOLISA in
identifying the poor households, the poverty incidence has been declined from 20.2%
in 2005 to 9.5% by 20105
. However, the poverty reduction rate of the minority
groups has been much lower than the rate of the Kinh and Chinese group (from 86.4%
in 1993 to 50.3% in 2008 compared with 53.9% in 1993 to 8.9% in 2008). Despite
great efforts made by the Government of Viet Nam to reduce the poverty in minority
areas and support minority groups through implementing various NTPs, such as NTPPR,
NTP- 135II, the support to 62 poorest districts following the instructions given by
the Party in its Resolution 30a…, the poverty incidence of many minority groups high
(53.9% by 2008) and the poverty gap between the majority and minority groups have
been still high (about six times).