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Review
on rural development
situation in Vietnam
With nearly 70% of population living in rural
areas, rural economy development is enshrined as the most important factor
ensuring the sustainable development of the nation. After approximately 15 years
of economic reform implementation, agriculture and rural development sector has
gained significant progress.
Livelihood of the majority of farmers has been
considerably improved. Farmers' household income has increased by over 10% since
1995, specifically from 7.7 million VND in 1993 to 9.8 million VND in 1998.
National food security has basically been maintained. Poor and hungry rate
reduced from 30% in 1992 to 13% in 1999, equivalent to the average level of 2% a
year.
Gender equality has increasingly drawn public
attention. Vietnamese women have actively participated in production and
business activities, occupying great proportion in workforce with more and more
women leaders at local level. The role of women associations has remarkably been
improved, especially in such activities as small credit and family planning.
Rural infrastructure has been considerably
improved with 84% of paddy cultivated land being irrigated, 93% of communes
having auto way to their centers, nearly 70% of communes getting access to
electricity, 98% of them having primary schools, 92% of them possessing health
care stations and 40% accessing standardized water.
Hunger elimination and poverty alleviation
programs and rural development programs mainly for very difficult communes and
backmost areas such as programs 327, 133 and 135 with their projects of
settlement, agricultural and forestry extension, infrastructure construction,
culture - education - society have made great contribution to improving rural
face.
New policies including regulations to
implement democracy in communes, administration reform and etc have provided
people with opportunities to participate in the monitoring of state activities,
management of society and development of community; mobilizing people's
activeness and creativeness, waking up responsibility and pride of individuals
and community in managing and mastering their own land. Public unions, not least
Women Association, Farmer Association, Veteran Association and etc have
gradually confirmed their roles in communal activities. In parallel with
economic improvement, political life in rural areas have been further
democratized and liberalized.
In short, the successful reform process of
economy and rural areas has mainly been attributed to the clear identification
of farmers' ownership, the mobilization of farmers in making decision on
production, the liberalization of market to match market prices with domestic
supply-demand relations and fluctuation in international markets. Those policies
have really helped agriculture and rural economy become the breakthrough in
economic reform process, contributing to controlling and drawing back inflation,
increasing foreign currency for the nation through exporting agricultural,
forestry and fishery products and especially improving farmers' life and rural
face.
The Party and State guideline in the years to
come is to keep on investing in rural development.
The following are some main
guidelines:
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Equipping 100% of communes with primary and
secondary schools and medical clinics by 2010
-
Universalizing primary and secondary
education to some pivotal areas.
-
Constructing auto way to communal centers
during 4 seasons
-
Reorganizing rural resident areas
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Providing households with enough clean water
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Basically eliminating popular diseases
-
Doubling people's income
-
Eliminating hungry households and reducing
poor ones.
-
Constructing democratic and just society to
make rural society more secure, civilized and stable.
Hunger elimination and
poverty alleviation
Over the past years, hunger elimination and
poverty alleviation is of great concern of the Party and State to implement the
target: " people prosperous, nation powerful, society just and
civilized".
A series of policies and guidelines on hunger
elimination and poverty alleviation have been formulated by the Party and State
such as: comprehensively developing rural society and economy; implementing
development strategy for each region and area; investing in rural
infrastructure; establishing and raising fund for hunger elimination and poverty
alleviation and fund for the poor have been designed. Great efforts by the
Party, the state and the whole population have helped reduce hungry and poor
households over the last years. From 1992 to 1998, poor and hungry rate of
Vietnam reduced by 2-3% a year. In 1992, there were 20 million people belonging
to the list of the poor and hungry, mainly in North East Provinces (about
22.4%), North Central Coast (about 24.6%), Central Highland (25.7%). In some
other areas, the rate is lower, including North East South (4.75%), Red River
Delta (8.3%), South Central Coast (17.8%), Mekong River Delta (15.3%). However,
reality shows that despite certain results gained from hunger elimination and
poverty alleviation activities over the last years; poor and hungry rate in
rural Vietnam, especially in mountainous and backmost areas remains too high.
In order to quickly reduce poor and hunger
rate, in July 1998, the government officially approved National Target Program
on Hunger elimination and Poverty alleviation (Program 133) for 1998-2000
period. Serving the target to decrease poor and hungry rate of the whole nation
to 10% by 2000, a series of programs have been implemented, including:
settlement and new economic zones, farming and non-farming development,
infrastructure improvement in difficult communes, agricultural-forestry-fishery
extension, support for difficult ethnic minorities, provision of credit,
education and health care for the poor.
In July 1998, the Prime minister approved
program 135 supporting for the development of 1715 poor and very difficult
communes in mountainous and backmost areas. Programs 133, 135 are two big
programs considerably affecting the hunger elimination and poverty alleviation
activities, creating initial progress after over one year of implementation. In
1999, 47120 households were settled, 1387 ha of fallow land were put in use,
2300 ha were afforested and 1738 ha of industrial crops and fruit trees were
planted. 1010 thousand households were provided with credit for developing
production with total fund of 2001 billion VND. On top of that, a series of
infrastructure works in rural areas, not least mountainous and remote areas have
been improved for production and livelihood. According to reports from Ministry
of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, in 1999 the number of poor households
reduced by 340000 in comparison with 1998, decreasing poor and hungry rate to
13%. Under preliminary evaluation, proposed plan for the year 2000 of the
program 133 will be fulfilled, specifically reducing national poor and hungry
rate to 10%.
Food security
Food security is a global issue. In the world
food security summit organized in Rome, Italia in November 1996, participants
committed to implement social and economic policies to fight against hunger,
poverty and malnutrition, stepping towards ensuring national and global food
security. At the same time, the summit affirmed: " the rights to
secure food and not to be driven into hunger are basic human rights".
Maintaining food security is the one with
improving food production, diversifying agriculture and non-farming professions,
enhancing food circulation to ensure stable food source, meeting the demand in
terms of food volume and nutrition, ensuring the access of everybody to food
source.
It is affirmed by Vietnam that ensuring
national food security is an important factor and a foundation for stabilizing
society and developing sustainable economy. The 8th Party congress clearly
declared: "comprehensive agricultural development towards ensuring national
food security in any cases, quickly increasing production of foodstuff and fruit
and vegetable, improving meals' nutrition, reducing malnutrition". Target
of national food security program is strongly developing commercial agricultural
production towards diversification and sustainable development; increasing the
amount of food and foodstuff; improving income; ensuring the access of people
from any where, at any time to food and food stuff; meeting the increasing
demand in terms of quality, nutrition, sanitary safety to improve physical and
spiritual power of the whole population.
Since 1988, thanks to renovation policies in
improving efficiency of agricultural production, annual paddy averted food
output has increased by 133 million tons, food growth rate has been 3 times
higher than population growth rate; increasing per capita food consumption from
290 kg in 1988 to over 400 kg in 1999. Even those years with fierce natural
calamities just like 1999 still gain bumper harvest for paddy, specifically with
the output of 31.3 million tons (1999), stabilizing food prices, ensuring timely
distribution of food to difficult areas, maintaining food security for the
majority of populace.
In addition, thanks to increasing income,
improved living standards, people's meals have been promoted in terms of both
quantity and quality, ability to opt food and foodstuff has been broader. On top
of that, the development of livestock sector and fruit and vegetable production
has offered people with higher nutrition value and better daily meal quality.
From 1990 to 1999, average growth rate of live weight pork, poultry and cattle
are 6.9%, 6.3% and 5.5% respectively; increasing per capita consumption of meat
from 15 kg in 1990 to 22.4 kg in 1999. Over the last 10 years, annual vegetable
and fruit output of Vietnam has increased considerably, with per capita output
in 1999 of 53 kg of fruit/year and 65 kg of vegetable/year.
In parallel with improving quantity and
quality of food and foodstuff, attention has been also paid to enhancing
infrastructure, transportation system; facilitating the development of
commercial network among regions to create the market linkage and to increase
the approach of backmost areas to food and foodstuff. In spite of being affected
by the strongly fragmented and stretched geography and large area of mountain,
Vietnam has established, in light of general development policies, programs to
ensure food security for localities, especially difficult regions. Thanks to
effective development policies, food security of Vietnam has generally been
ensured at the national level.
Future target on food security is to ensure
the access to food and enough income for people to acquire food in every region
and family in any weather conditions and high quality of meals ensuring sanitary
standards.
Gender equality
In the world nowadays, many researches have
been made to prove the close relationship between gender equality and rural
economy development. Gender equality can enable the effective and sustainable
economic development and the stable improvement of family and society. In
Vietnam, except from researches about balancing income, hunger elimination and
poverty alleviation and effective management of natural resources, studies in
gender equality (especially the one in rural areas) are now drawing great
attention,
Historical concept: undervaluing the
female: Vietnam has one of the most prolonged feudalism in the world. In
that period, the role of women was not fully respected in the society. They had
to obey feudalism regulations, fully depending on their husbands and sons. Their
only officially recognized work was taking care of children and doing housework.
Other activities including studying, participating in examination and national
managing were dominated by men. Those conventional concepts have impacted on the
next generations, making the equal treatment to women hard to be gained.
It is
more clearly reflected as following:
-
Women were in charge of the majority of
housework but failed to get decisive voice in their families.
-
Women gained less opportunity to learn than
men.
-
Women participating in heavy production
activities achieved lower income than men.
-
Etc
Due to being treated unequally, women got few
chances to express their own ability in socio-economic activities. As a result,
women role in economic development was often under evaluated. Since the
independence of the nation, women role in economy, family management, social
development and nation's protection has increasingly improved.
Gender equality in rural economic development:
women account for the majority in rural population (51.5%) and rural workforce
(51.86%). In agricultural, forestry and fishery production, women participate in
most of production stages. So, in comparison with men, they make great
contribution to rural economic growth. Being aware of women's role, rural
socio-economic policies formulated by the government over the last time have
gone in parallel with improving women's role in response to their real abilities
and potentials. Nowadays, broad attention from society to women is considered as
significant factor contributing to rural economic development through increasing
jobs, facilitating their access to credit, education and science and technology
advances in production. In addition, salary and insurance for women have been
brought up equally to men's. There are more and more women taking important
positions in state and party mechanism.
Environment and resource
management
Since 70s, it has been recognized that
consequences from over exploitation of natural resources to living and working
environment have finally restrained economic development. Natural resources are
common assets of many generations. If this generation tries to gain maximum
growth by fully exploiting natural resources, the next one will not be able to
keep on maintaining sustained development. The most rational development way is
to combine exploitation with protection of natural resources and environment.
Inherited tropical and monsoon climate and
located in favorable geographical position, Vietnam possesses various natural
resources, diversified forests and special ecological systems. Long coast is
very convenient for aquaculture and tourism development. Agriculture and
forestry sector occupies nearly 60% of total land, water, forest and sea
sources. Therefore, the exploitation and protection of this precious resource is
now drawing much attention from the Vietnam state and people.
Land resource: Vietnam has over
39 million ha of natural land. 18.881 million ha is used for socio-economic
purpose (57.39% of total land area) including 7.398 million ha of agricultural
land (accounting for 22.2% of natural land and 38.92% of socio-economic land).
The rest of 14.217 million ha (making up 43.96% of natural land) is not in use.
Water resource: Vietnam
possesses a various water resource with average annual rain falls of 1960 mm.
Investment has now been focused by the state on constructing important
irrigation works, exploiting clean water resource for production and daily life.
During 10 years (1987-1997), irrigated area increased by 1.4 million ha. Up to
now, irrigation system has watered for 84% of paddy cultivated area (5.9 million
ha) and drained for 1.4 million ha. 40% of farmers' households have clean water
for daily life.
Vietnam has total area of 226000 km2, 3260 km
of sea coast, 2 million ha of land able for aquaculture including 1 million ha
of fresh water, 0.62 million ha of brackish water and 0.38 million ha of salty
water. The majority of this area is used for exploiting or aquaculture sector.
Forest resource: three forth of
our country is mountains and hills. 9 million ha is forest (accounting for over
30% of total land area), an important part of ecological environment, moderating
climate. In Vietnam, there are about 8000 higher plant species, 800 lichen
species, 600 mushroom kinds, 275 animal species, 820 bird kinds, 180 reptile
kinds, 471 fresh water fish species and over 2000 salt water fish kinds. The
discovery of 2 hoof kinds of Sao La and Mang lon in Vietnam can eloquently prove
the diversity and variety of Vietnam creature. Covering rate of forests in
Vietnam is rather high and rational, limiting the flows from land surface right
after rains, alleviating flood, moderating currents during the time between
rainy and dry seasons. Vietnam has over 100 natural preservation zones. In order
to raise forestry covering rate, the Government is now allocating over 1 million
ha of forestry land to households, over 5 million to socio-economic
organizations. Thanks to the prohibition of over-exploitation of natural forest,
over the last time, forestry-covering rate has initially been increased.
However, there are different reasons making
forestry resources, land and water resource destroyed and shrunk. In terms of
land resource, agricultural workforce is now increasing along with rapid
urbanization of rural areas, further shrinking production land fund with average
agricultural area for one household of only 5162 m2. Regarding forestry
resources, the over exploitation of natural resources have caused bad
consequences to the climate in recent years, especially draught and storm in the
South in 1998, big flood in the Center in 1999 and flood in Mekong River Delta
in 2000. Concerning water resource, the over exploitation of sea food and
fresh water has now made it exhausted and caused bad impact on ecological
environment in many regions of the country.
Extensive development - i.e. increasing output
through exploiting more and more natural resources - has pushed basic natural
resources to exploitation limit; lowering production growth and facilitating the
appearance of ecological crisis. The sustainable development can only be gained
through quick transformation to intensive development towards using, exploiting
and recreating effectively natural resources.
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