Challenges to Rural Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam - Oxfam Blogs

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12 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The last five years (2007-2011) has been a difficult period for Viet Nam. High inflation, the global financial crisis and economic recession, natural disasters and epidemics have affected the lives of everybody in Viet Nam, particularly the poor. Nevertheless, the poverty rate continues to decline. Major Government investments have provided the poor with improved infrastructure, education, health care, access to credit, agro-forestry extension services and housing improvements. Improved living standards at the monitoring points are associated with strategies to combine agriculture (land-based diversification and intensification), non-agriculture (including labour mobility) and investment in children’s education. The recorded achievements are remarkable, yet rural poverty reduction remains a challenge. Poverty reduction rates are uneven in rural areas. The poverty rate among ethnic minority groups remains stubbornly high, particularly in remote mountainous areas. In such situations, it is more important to close the widening poverty gap between regions, ethnic groups and within communities . A multi-dimensional poverty analysis is essential. Across the monitoring points people’s lives have improved in many respects. People own more property (mainly housing, motorbikes, and livestock) and have improved access to information (TV, telephones). However, many people face difficult living conditions (lack of safe water, latrines), have limited access to markets, have little opportunity of non-agricultural employment and struggle to manage the many risks they face. The percentage of households that are predominantly engaged in agriculture remains high, and remains a significant indicator of household poverty. Food shortages between harvests or during epidemics and natural disasters remains a significant challenge. Gender roles remain the same today as in 2007, and women still do not play an active role in productive and social activities. The proportion of women in administration is still low and their capacities at local administrative levels are limited. In communities in which different social groups have specific difficulties, it is important to tailor policies to each group. Developing social security systems is a major challenge. Policy coverage is limited, the level of assistance is low, targeting is imperfect and often inadequate and local capacity to implement social policies is weak. Recipient households are identified using a list of poor households. However, the different needs of vulnerable households vary considerably and are not recorded in the list, making more nuanced policy difficult. Price volatility has been a serious issue since 2007. High inflation in 2008 and 2011 affected many people. Some commodity producers benefit from price increases of agricultural produce. However, the poor are sensitive to higher input prices and benefit little from increasing agricultural prices because of small-scale production and weak market position. Increased prices for food, services and other necessities reduces purchasing power, and affects the food security of poor households who do not grow their own food. Labour mobility has increased over the last five years. Labour mobility is associated with diversified livelihood strategies and plays an increasingly important role in rural poverty reduction. More men work away from home than women, although at many monitoring points an increasing proportion of women are seeking work further afield.
Increased labour mobility changes the local labour structure and traditional gender divisions. However, when men work away from home women face an increased domestic burden. Few ethnic minority people in mountainous areas work away from home due to community and family barriers. 13 Access to educational services has improved considerably at the monitoring points. Semi-boarding for general school children has proved effective, particularly in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. However, the proportion of lower and upper secondary school children dropping out of school is still high and is even increasing in some disadvantaged mountainous areas. Some ethnic minority children continue to struggle with schooling in the Vietnamese language. Increasing out of pocket spending on children’s education is a major burden for the poor. Access to agricultural extension services has improved. A network of grassroots agricultural extension workers has been established in most of the monitoring points in mountainous ethnic minority areas. However, the participatory agricultural extension approach (increasing the function of counselling, facilitation and hand-on guidance) has not yet been extensively applied. Improved farming methods have yet to be applied on a large scale. Funding for agricultural extension projects is limited, while the capacity of grassroots agricultural extension workers is weak. Reformed planning and decentralized investment at the commune level is becoming more important. People now have better access to information on policies, programmes and projects, many of which have been designed to improve the participation of the poor and poor communities. However, there remains a gap between policy and its implementation. The application of participatory approaches and decentralized financing mechanisms, such as the Community Development Fund (CDF) in some survey sites, has been encouraging, yet still faces many challenges. Grassroots cadres and local residents have limited capacity, district level government and communes do not work closely together, plans and financial resource plans are not adequately communicated and gender and disaster and climate change strategies are not incorporated in the planning process. This five-year report presents the following recommendations for discussion toward sustainable poverty reduction in Viet Nam’s rural areas, particularly mountainous ethnic minority areas: 1. To promote qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of emerging themes in order to develop suitable poverty reduction policies. Suggested themes are the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the multidimensional character of poverty. There should also be a specific focus on northern mountainous ethnic minority areas. 2. To formulate more vigorous support policies in favour of specific disadvantaged groups such as the “chronically” poor, the temporarily poor, the vulnerable poor and the near-poor and people who have just escaped from poverty. Support policies should: increase direct cash transfers to the chronically poor, build capacity relevant to people’s livelihoods, increase conditional assistance and reduce unconditional assistance to the temporarily poor, increase investment in programmes that manage risks facing vulnerable groups improve access for the near-poor to health insurance, credit, agricultural extension and education. 3. To build social security policy that ensures the right to security and a minimum living standard acceptable to every citizen. To consolidate similar policies in order to minimise mistakes, reduce the management burden and implementation costs. To provide more targeted assistance to the most vulnerable households
Page 3: PARTICIPATORY POVERTY MONITORING IN
Page 7: PREFACE 1 7 In early 2007, Viet Nam
Page 10 and 11: ABBREVIATIONS AND TERMS 10 ActionAi
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Page 23: Part 1 Poverty Trends and Key Theme
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Participatory poverty monitoring in
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Part 3 Toward Sustainable Rural Pov
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