Hanoi is striving to reduce its poverty rate by 0.2% from 2014 by removing 3,500 poor households from the list this year. It also targets no commune with poor families accounting for 25% of total population. To achieve these goals, the city will speed up the implementation of poverty reduction policies by including them in socio-economic development, new-style rural building and infrastructure investment support programs for ethnic minority areas. It will also give priority to facilitating the poor’s access to fundamental social services in a bid to help them escape from poverty on their own. According to Hanoi’s poverty criteria for the 2011-2015 period, the city currently has over 34,400 poor households and nearly 44,640 near-poor ones, accounting for 1.91% and 2.48% of its population, respectively. (vietnamplus.vn Jan 22)
