### Box 10. Goal Fight: Reduce vulnerability

Target 1: Increase the average income of the lowest expenditure quintile to 140 percent of that in 2000 and 190 percent of that in 2010 Target 2: Reduce by half the rate of poor people falling back into poverty due to natural disasters and other risks by 2010

### Source: Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2002).

A broader approach to addressing vulnerability is required - The Government’s traditional approach to reduce vulnerability has been providing social assistance to defined vulnerable groups such as humanitarian support for the aged and disabled, and subsidies for production inputs and transport services. But in the CPRGS the government recognises the importance of additional measures for reducing vulnerability that are related to building the assets of the poor and near-poor households and increasing their ability to manage risk. Some proposed measures to that effect include: improving access to affordable health care, improving access to agricultural extension to help diversify farm incomes; and improved disaster mitigation and response mechanisms. However, to make sufficient progress in reducing vulnerability, the government should take some additional measures such as enhancing access to savings facilities, and fully relax restrictions associated with being a migrant with temporary residential status.

# Goal Nine: Ensure Good Governance for Poverty Reduction

Serious improvements in the area of governance are required. The Government faces pressing, crosscutting governance challenges which will need to be met in order to achieve the desired outcomes. The CPRGS includes some goals for improving governance (Box 11) and elaborates some actions to be undertaken in the areas of public administration reform, the promotion of grassroots democracy and legal reforms.

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Target 1: Effectively implement grass-roots democracy Target 2: Ensure budget transparency

## Target 3: Implement legal reform agenda

Source: Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2002) No detailed plan for public administration reform yet exists. A five year Master Program for Public Administration Reform for 2001-2005 has been approved, but a detailed strategy for implementing reforms is yet to be formulated. The CPRGS therefore lacks detail in specifying concrete actions for the next few years. The Government has carried out a legal needs assessment and an action plan is being drawn up. The action plan emphasizes legal needs for the poor and the CPRGS draws on this work to define clear tasks in improving the access of the poor to justice.

Better accountability is required at the local level The Government has articulated its commitment to the implementation of the grassroots democracy decree throughout the country and this is fundamental to ensuring that poor communities are fully involved in planning and resource-allocation decisions at the commune level. Community-level consultations held to discuss with poor communities the draft CPRGS found that these was little implementation of this Decree to date and that there was high demand at the community level for strengthened accountability systems and mechanisms for greater community participation (Shanks and Turk, 2002). Improved performance will require considerable training and 37