Double-digit inflation and shocks from the global financial turmoil threaten to plunge Vietnamese households living on the margins back into dire poverty, the UN has warned.
Despite Vietnam’s economic boom of recent years, many groups remain vulnerable to food shortages — especially landless farmers, the urban poor and ethnic minority groups — UN resident coordinator John Hendra said.
While global commodity and energy prices have dropped back from their peaks this year, Vietnam’s inflation, although falling, still stood at 26.7 percent this month, squeezing the family budgets of the most marginalized groups.
PHOTO: AFP
On top of soaring consumer prices, Hendra said, the global financial crisis will likely impact Vietnam’s export-driven economy.
“Taken together, these economic challenges threaten to derail Vietnam’s progress in reducing poverty,” he said in a televised national address on Friday.
UN data showed that “less money is available to many Vietnamese households, especially poorer ones and there is a real risk some families could fall back below the poverty line, while those already there need additional help,” he said.
“Poorer women and children are particularly at risk since higher food prices can worsen their already precarious nutritional status,” he said.
Vietnam, which launched its doi moi (renewal or renovation) market reforms in the late 1980s, has seen more than a decade of economic growth above 7.5 percent, lifting tens of millions out of poverty.
The developing country of 86 million joined the WTO early last year and hopes to soon become a middle-income nation with annual GDP of US$1,000 per capita.
However, over the past year, Vietnam’s overheating economy has been hit by double-digit inflation and other economic woes. Especially high food and gasoline prices have hit the poor the hardest and fuelled social discontent.
Vietnam, the world’s No. 2 rice exporter, does not face overall food shortages, Hendra stressed in a separate speech last week.
But he warned that, while some farmers had benefited from high global food prices, more than half of Vietnamese households are net buyers of food and have seen their real purchasing power reduced.
Groups including low-skilled and landless rural workers and the elderly “are not only temporarily worse off but also challenged in their long-term ability to secure adequate intakes of food,” Hendra said.
Ethnic minorities faced the greatest risk, including in the Central Highlands and northwestern mountains, which already face “high poverty and moderate to severe stunting rates among children under five years.”
To address the problem, Hendra recommended that Vietnam strengthen its social security programs and its data collection on poverty to more precisely and quickly identify and help the most vulnerable groups.
He also warned of long-term threats to food security in industrializing Vietnam as agricultural areas face pressure from “a growing demand for land for industrial, residential, tourist and leisure purposes.”
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
RSS