Vietnam successfully implements MDGs

The results were announced at a recent event on Vietnam’s MDGs organised by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and United Nations Development Programme in Hanoi yesterday (21/9). Participants at the event praised Vietnam’s achievement in fulfilling the MDGs.

Pratibha Mehta, UN Resident Co-ordinator, UNDP Resident Representative, said: "In the last 15 years, Vietnam has made incredible progress. There are few countries in the world which has achieved poverty reduction that Vietnam has achieved from 54% to 14% is a huge achievement".

Gabriel Demombynes, Senior Economist of Hanoi office of the World Bank, said: "Vietnam has also achieved tremendous growth in terms of infrastructure. It’s amazing that nearly all Vietnamese now have access to electricity, and large strikes have been made in access to clean water, sanitation. For all of these reasons, Vietnam is seen as a model for what developing countries can achieve. Vietnamese citizens should be proud of these achievements".

Among the 3 already-achieved goals, Vietnam has eradicated extreme poverty and hunger, reducing the poverty rate to half of that in 2002, 13 years ahead of schedule.

Maternal mortality has declined considerably over the last two decades, from 233 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 69 per 100,000 live births in 2009. According to report from UNDP, this rate has reduced to 56 per 100,000 live births in 2015. Compared with the MDG goal of 58.3 in 2015, Vietnam has successfully completed this index.

Vietnam is committed to improving maternal and child healthcare. To finish the MDG, our strategy is to focus the resource on particular groups; which in this case are those in mountainous and rural areas. Home births are common in this area. So we have come up with a village-based midwives model. This is just one example. Besides appropriate policies, we also receive state budget and international help.

However, the MDG agenda is unfinished in Vietnam and there are remaining issues. One of which is disparity between ethnic people and the major Kinh group.

According to a representative of the Committee for Ethnic Minority affairs, the poverty rate among ethnic minority groups still stands at some 50%. To tackle this issue, the prime minister issued a Decision on Millennium Development Goals Indicators for ethnic minorities towards implementing Sustainable development goals until 2025.

This issue will be among priorities in the post-2015 development agenda expected to be adopted at the coming UN Summit.

Concluding 15 years of MDGs implementation, Vietnam’s State President Truong Tan Sang alongside with nearly 200 other world leaders will attend the UN Sustainable development Summit on Sept 25th in New York.  A new set of sustainable development goals is expected to be adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.