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Rising Prices,
Poverty Reduction and
Relevant Policies
5.2.10 New Support Policies for the Poor and Near-poor Groups
More efforts should be made to formulate and implement new support policies and programmes so as to
gradually improve the social assistance system in Viet Nam which is a necessary step towards the objective
of becoming a middle-income country by 2010. These are becoming even more essential given the adverse
impacts of rising prices on the life of the urban poor and rural poor.
The following policies/programmes could be considered (with reference to international experiences and in
relation to the context of Viet Nam):
• “Food security and nutrition” programme: survey and identify hungry households who cannot
afford the very minimum level of nutrition; define measures to provide cash or food assistance (for
example, in the form of “food coupons”). Emergency relief activities have been organized in
disaster-affected areas only on an ad-hoc basis. These need to be developed into a national
programme with a complete package including identification of target groups, assistance modality,
budget allocation, monitoring and supervision and establishment of management structure at all
levels. This programme should be explicitly linked to other programmes aiming at improving food
production, such as agricultural extention. The programme would also have to be sensitive to
possible creation of dependency.
• “School meals” programme: provide
free lunches for full-day schooling
children in kindergartens and
primary schools especially those in
difficult mountainous areas.
• Assistance of poor workers including
migrant workers with the
engagement of mass organizations
and enterprises; formulation of
enterprise support policies (for
example, access to concessional
loans) to encourage quality skills
training, recruitment and security of
jobs and incomes for both the local Support for “school meals” will provide students better meals than this
poor and migrant workers.
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