Hue, who is head of the Steering Committee for the National Target Programme on Building Modern Rural Areas, chaired a meeting of the committee on June 28 to review its operation in the first six months of 2016 and map out key tasks for the second half of the year.
Reports at the meeting showed that so far around 1,965 communes across the nation have reached the standards for new-style rural area construction, accounting for 22% of the total, an increase of nearly 5% compared with the end of 2015; while 23 units at the district level are recognised as having reached the standards, 8 districts more compared to the end of 2015. On average, 13.0 criteria were met per commune, up 8.3 criteria over the start of the programme in 2010, and 3.0 over the same period in 2015.
The Steering Committee set a target to have about 25% of communes and 30-35 district-level units reach modern rural area standards by the end of 2016. In 2016, the country is expected to mobilise around VND263 trillion (US$11.8 billion) from relevant resources to implement the programme, of which the central budget has allocated VND7.4 trillion (US$333 million).
Deputy PM Hue stressed that the programme has become a movement attracting extensive participation of people after five years of implementation. It has created major breakthroughs in infrastructure and socio-economic development, changing the face of rural areas, and more importantly, improving the living conditions of rural residents, he added.
He suggested related ministries and agencies integrate the implementation of the programme on their working agendas for the next five years, with a focus on reviewing and improving the national criteria for district and commune levels on the issue.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development should submit to the Prime Minister the framework of the criteria on the number of criteria, and clarify the content of the criteria, particularly those relating to livelihood, employment, income and spiritual life of rural residents.
For localities that reached the standards in the previous period, the deputy PM asked for necessary measures to strengthen and promote values achieved to develop them into representative modern rural areas for other others to follow.
Hue stated orientations for the 2016-2020 period with a focus on strengthening implementation of the programme in disadvantaged areas, as over 300 communes have reached less than five criteria, and 400 border and coastal communes, as well as continuing to raise the average number of criteria reached across the country.
To encourage the programme, the head of the Steering Committee suggested raising standards for criteria, especially those related to production (restructuring agricultural production towards developing value chains with high value added), culture, social security, and environment.
Regarding the implementation of the programme in the near future, Deputy PM Hue said that local people should be the core of the programme under support from the State.
