Hanoi (VNA) – The northwestern mountainousprovince of Dien Bien has seen strong progress in poverty reduction with morethan 3,800 households escaping poverty in 2018.

A survey released in 2018 showed that the province had morethan 47,000 poor households, accounting for 37.08 percent of the total households,down 3.93 percent from 2017.

The poverty ratio in districts covered by Resolution 30a onfast and sustainable poverty reduction decreased to 52.09 percent in 2018 from56.84 percent in 2017.

Dien Bien is working towards the target of reducing thenumber of poor households to about 44,000 at the end of 2019, including 39,000in poor districts, or 33.97 percent.

To that end, the province will continue strengtheningcommunications and encourage locals to get rid of poverty and build new-stylerural areas.

Along with reviewing poverty reduction and social welfarepolicies and new-style rural area building programme, Dien Bien will supportpoor households to promote their own production with specific measures suitableto their conditions, thus helping them reduce poverty sustainably.

Together with using central and local budget for the work, theprovince will actively mobilise resources from businesses, the society andcommunity, while integrating capital of poverty reduction programmes into thenew-style rural area building programme to develop commercial goods productionand improve incomes for poor households.

Dien Bien will also enhance the quality of occupationalorientation and vocational training, increasing export of labourers, assisting thecommunity affected by natural disasters, and supervising poor households inusing loans for economic production.

In 2018, Dien Bien had seven poor districts. Among 103wards, communes and towns, 101 are of extreme poverty and 103 are covered bythe 135 Programme on poverty reduction.

In the year, total capital for the national target programmefor poverty reduction in the locality was over 420 billion VND (18.06 millionUSD), including more than 310 billion VND of development capital.

Over the past years, Dien Bien has focused on improvinginfrastructure system in poor localities, especially transport system.Meanwhile, it has made full use of advantages in land and forest to developindustrial and fruit tree farms, as well as livestock breeding.

Localities across the province have fostered connections ineducation and human resources development as well as economic production, especiallybetween poor and developed localities, thus improving locals’ incomes.-VNA