While working with the relevant ministries and agencies in Hanoi recently, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung stressed that if Vietnam fails to develop its rural areas, the country cannot become a sustainable industrial country by 2020.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Cao Duc Phat, who is also head of the programme’s organising board, said that the key national programme will be implemented in all communes across the country to make full use of their internal strength. The State will only provide a small amount of direct financial assistance to mobilise contributions from the community, he added.

The programme will focus on five major fields: developing human resources in rural areas, boosting the development of the socio-economic infrastructure in rural areas, assisting the development of effective models of production in rural areas, building a diversified and healthy lifestyle in rural areas, protecting the environment and improving the living standards in rural areas.

According to Minister Phat, Vietnam is also introducing 11 key national programmes and many large projects relating to rural development. Therefore, he said, apart from increasing financial sources to implement these programmes and projects, the national programme to develop rural areas in the 2010-2020 period with a vision to 2030 will concentrate on three new issues that have not yet mentioned in other programmes or projects. The three issues include a project to develop socio-economic infrastructures in rural areas, a project to develop effective production models in rural areas, and a project to increase the rural management capacity.

Other participants suggested relevant ministries and departments should have carefully examined the current state of affairs in rural areas, including project norms, criteria for workers to receive vocational training, have an overall view before bringing the programme into effect.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung called for more attention to be paid to strengthening the relationship between this programme and other programmes and make sure they are interrelated with each other. The programme should conform to the accepted norms of new rural areas.

He proposed that the programme should not only build up local infrastructures but also support the development of rural economies and every rural area at communal level should have a thorough grasp of its objectives.  

Mr. Hung said that the MARD should work with relevant agencies to ensure the standard quality of new rural areas, including schools and cultural centres.

The Deputy PM asked all communes, districts and provinces to build new rural areas in line with the specific objectives set for the coming periods until 2015, 2020 and 2030.   

Some objectives of the national programme to develop rural areas in the 2010-2020 period with a vision to 2030:

By 2010: all new rural areas will have communes coherent eco-socio infrastructure systems following the standard norms of new rural areas, improve the management capacity of local staff, raise local incomes by at least 1.1-1.2 and reduce the rate of poor households to under 10 percent (according to the standards adopted in 2007).

By 2015: they will increase local incomes to 1.8-2 times against today and increase the number of skilled workers through vocational training courses by over 30 percent. Farmers will earn 50 percent more than today and gradually control environment pollution.

By 2020: they will complete the new rural eco-socio infrastructures without any place being of risk of environment pollution.