Accelerating building of new-style rural areas

In addition, the mindset of the agricultural economy has been initially promoted and impacted the economic development in rural areas. The rural environment and landscape are being improved towards preserving traditional cultural identity, adapting to climate change and boosting sustainable development.

The country has about 78% of communes to date meeting standards set for new-style rural areas, including 1,860 communes meeting standards for advanced new-style rural areas and 340 communes meeting standards for model new-style rural areas.

As many as 283 districts in 58 provinces and cities have been recognised as new-style rural areas, while 15 provinces and cities have 100% of communes and 100% of districts meeting standards, set for new-style rural areas. Five provinces have been recognised by the Prime Minister, for completing the task of building new-style rural areas.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in addition to the National Target Programme on building new-style rural areas, the government issued six other specialised programmes in this field, including one commune- one product (OCOP) programme; the development of rural tourism; the promotion of science and technology serving the building of new-style rural areas; digital transformation in rural building; strengthening environmental protection, food safety and the supply of clean water; and improving rural security and order.

In many localities, specialised programmes have supported the building of new-style rural areas, especially the OCOP programme which has contributed to fostering the potential, advantages, and indigenous values of localities and products. The country currently has 12,075 OCOP products recognised as three stars or higher, including 42 certified as five stars. The quality and reliability of OCOP products are gradually asserted in the market and favoured by consumers.

However, besides the achieved results, the building of new-style rural areas reveals unsustainability with large disparities between regions, especially mountainous provinces. The building of advanced and model new-style rural areas at the village level still faces difficulties. The sustainable maintenance of the results of some recognised communes remains limited while the infrastructure after meeting the standards has shown signs of deterioration in some localities.

The remaining time of the 2021-2025 period is not much. So far, more than 1,500 communes nationwide have met less than 15 criteria out of 19 criteria set for new-style rural areas. Accordingly, more effective guidance and drastic solutions are needed to accelerate the building of new-style rural areas in 2024.

Localities must maintain the achievements they have gained while analysing and addressing inadequacies and obstacles. In addition, localities should propose solutions to speed up the completion of the goals of the programme, especially localities without any districts or communes recognised as new-style rural areas.

Furthermore, there should be mechanisms to encourage disadvantaged communes, ethnic minority and mountainous areas to strive to fulfil new-style rural standards in the context of limited support resources from the state budget. Ministries and sectors need to work out more specific criteria and methods to build new-style rural areas in accordance with certain situations of each locality, especially the building of model new-style rural areas.

(Source: NDO)