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Impacts of Price Hikes
on the Lives and Livelihoods
of the Rural Poor
Vegetables. Poor people in Dien Bien and Quang Tri, especially those who can grow vegetables themselves
or collect vegetables/bamboo sprouts from the forests, have managed to maintain the same level of
vegetable consumption. Only in Dak Lak where people have to buy vegetables on a daily basis, have a
number of poor households cut their vegetable consumption. Buying fruits to eat in addition to what they
can be grown themselves is still considered a luxury by poor people.
Other foods. Poor people now have to minimize consumption of other food products. Most of them have
stopped using cooking oil and shifted to pork fat. In Quang Tri the poor have even stopped eating pork fat.
In commodity producing areas such as Dien Bien (paddy) and Dak Lak (maize/coffee) where poor EM people
can easily find simple jobs to do, they have shifted to buy certain food products in small packages instead of
big packages as they did in 2007 in order to save money. They are now only buying small sachets of MSG,
cooking oil and sugar at only 1,000-2,000 VND each for daily use only. This way the cumulative cost is higher.
However, they have no choice as they have to depend on their daily income and do not have any savings.
Similarly poor people have had to minimize the purchase of other essential products. In Quang Tri, they have
even stopped using toothpaste: “As the price of toothpaste also increases they [Vân Kiu poor people] no
longer use toothpaste. Instead they either use nothing or just salty water”. (A shopkeeper in Xy commune).
Cut on other expenses. Given limited income, the poor have to prioritize various items of expenditure and
expenses related to community relationships. Prioritisation became even more important during the ‘price
storm’ period.
The “priority setting” exercise for household expenditure (exclusive of contingency such as sickness-related
expenses) with poor women and men revealed the following common features of the three study sites:
1. The top priority group include rice, payment of seeds/fertilizer loans (if they fail to pay off these loans,
they will have to pay high interest and are not likely be able to borrow new loans), cassava harvesting
(food for exchanged labourers and transport costs), and electricity (only a few tens of thousand VND).
2. The second priority group included school fees for children, fish sauce, salt, MSG and dried fish.
There is a notable difference between the Kinh and the EM people regarding their order of priority
within this group. The Kinh people place “school fees” before fish sauce, salt and MSG while the
EM people do otherwise. To the poorer households, MSG is considered even more essential since
their main daily dish is vegetable soup with salt and MSG. In Quang Tri particularly, chilli and
cigarettes are considered as important as fish sauce, salt and MSG.
3. The third priority group consists of fish, pork and social events such as weddings and funerals.
Funerals are considered more important to attend than weddings. “You don’t need an invitation to
attend a funeral”. The EM people have a custom of contributing cash and/or rice to support the
family having the funeral. Weddings can be optional depending on how close the relationship is.
Gift money for weddings has increased by at least 30-50 percent over the last year and become a
considerable item of expenditure of the poor. They sometimes even have to take out a loan or sell
some rice to afford to attend a wedding.
Wedding gift voucher
In the middle of the ‘price storm’ the average wedding gift money rose. Many people have to try
to get a loan or sell something from the house to get some money as a wedding gift. Some have
creative solutions to the problem.
A newly married couple received an envelope of wedding gift money which looked exactly the same
as the other envelopes. However on opening it they didn’t find money as they had expected. To their
surprise it was a note reading “We and our family would like to give you a wedding gift worth 100
thousand VND. Next month when we harvest our rice crop we will send the money to you” [signed]
(A story shared in a discussion with the poor households groups in Thanh Xuong,
Dien Bien, July 2008)
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