Vietnam has halved poverty

From IRIN, a story about a new OXFAM report that says that Vietnam has already halved poverty before the Millennium Development Goal year of 2015.

A new Oxfam report highlights Vietnam's performance in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and reducing poverty five years ahead of the 2015 target.

"Vietnam's track record is one of the best in the world. They are absolutely a role model within East Asia and more broadly in the world," Steve Price-Thomas, Oxfam's Vietnam country director told IRIN on 14 September from Hanoi. According to Halving world Hunger: Still Possible, Vietnam has cut hunger and reduced poverty from about 58 percent of the population in 1993 to just 18 percent today. "To put this in perspective, this means that since 1993 roughly 6,000 people per day have been pulled out of hunger poverty," Price-Thomas said.

By focusing on agricultural land reform, Vietnam has made land distribution more equitable, invested heavily in irrigation and agricultural technology and maintained restrictions on rice exports until 2001, nurturing the domestic industry.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is set to announce on 14 September that the number of hungry people worldwide has dropped, for the first time in 15 years, from 1.23 billion in 2009 to 925 million.