She made the appraisal while inspecting the city’s implementation of policies and laws on poverty reduction during the period 2005-2012 on December 25 and 26.
HCM City is the only locality in the country that provides codes to poor households, she said, adding that the city has devised particular policies on poverty reduction suitable with each period of time.
Municipal authorities recently decided to raise the poverty benchmark to VND 16 million (US$752) per person per year for 2014-2015 from the VND12 million set in the previous period.
The move has made it easier for local people to gain access to the State’s policies, she noted, highlighting the city’s mobilisation of various resources to the programme, along with its budget.
She suggested the locality pay more attention to improving the living standards of households near the poverty line.
HCM City currently contains about 16,000 poor households, with nine districts having no poor households. Between 2005 and 2012, the city granted more than 2 million health insurance cards to poor people at a cost of VND428 billion, and built and upgraded over 17,400 houses.
As of 2012, there were over 2.1 million poor households in Vietnam, and more than 1.4 million others lived near the poverty line.
A survey conducted by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs showed that the 2012 poverty rate has been reduced by 2.12%, exceeding the target of 2% set by the National Assembly. In particular, the rate sharply fell in poor districts – by 7.02%, while the NA target was just 4%.
