The target programmes, which are designed to improve the people’s living standards, will now focus on two major tasks: building new rural areas and reducing poverty in a sustainable manner.
The reorganisation was approved because National Assembly deputies realised that limited resources were distributed among too many programmes that sometimes overlapped and failed to meet their desired goals.
Under the rural modernisation programme, the government has targeted that by 2020, about half of all communes, the smallest administrative division in Vietnam, will meet the 19 new rural criteria.
There will also be no communes which fulfil less than five criteria.
Over the next five years, the government also seeks to reduce the number of poor people living under the new national poverty line by 1-1.5% annually nationwide and 4% in extremely disadvantaged communes.
The budget for the rural modernisation programme will be at least VND193.155 trillion (US$8.7 billion) while that for sustainable poverty reduction is VND46.161 trillion (US$2.1 billion).
Under the National Assembly’s resolution, resources will be prioritised for extremely disadvantaged, border, coastal and island communes.
