The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in coordination with the United National Development Programme (UNDP) held a conference in Hanoi on October 2 to review the National Targeted Programme for Poverty Reduction (NTP-PR) in the 2006-2010 term.

Vietnam has already attained the twin Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving the number of hungry people and people living in poverty by 2015. This is a significant achievement acknowledged internationally, and the NTP-PR made an important contribution to this success.

The mid-term review underscored five factors: relevance, effectiveness in meeting targets, programme economy and efficiency, targeting efficacy and quality of service delivery.

The review found that the programme experiences a degree of leakage (non-poor people receiving programme benefits) and under-coverage (poor people not included in the programme). The reasons for this are various but a key problem identified by the review is the current administrative system of targeting beneficiaries, which is slow and unwieldy and may not be well-suited to changing conditions in which people frequently move in out of poverty.

In terms of service quality, beneficiaries praised the programme but the review showed that there is still significant scope for improving communications and participation.

Dang Kim Trung, deputy head of the Institute for Labour, Sciences and Social Affairs, proposed some short-, medium- and long-term measures to cope with anticipated problems. As Vietnam moves toward middle-income status there will have to be new yard sticks for poverty and new poverty reduction targets. Poverty mostly occurs in remote and socially excluded communities, but an evolving and increasingly urban economy has created new risks and challenges for many - increasing inequality, vulnerability to socio-economic and environmental shocks, and quality of life issues.

Therefore, one long-term recommendation is to develop a comprehensive social welfare strategy to protect people from risks and economic shocks.