Vietnam ends extreme poverty for millions of people

"15 years have passed since the UN Member States endorsed the Millennium Declaration, and Vietnam embarked on the localization and implementation of MDGs, monitoring and reporting on its MDG progress," Vice Minister Phuong said in his keynote address.

Vietnam's achievements in the implementation of MDGs are widely recognized and applauded by the international community. The country has made remarkable achievements in meeting MDG1, MDG2, MDG3, and MDG5 on poverty, education, gender equality, and maternal health.

Significant progress has also been made toward achieving MDG4 on reducing child mortality.

Vice Minister Phuong emphasized the Vietnam government, non-governmental organizations and the Vietnamese people all have very good reasons to be proud of these achievements.

The 15-year MDG journey, under MPI's leadership, has not only helped Vietnam reduce poverty and improve the basic health and education throughout the nation but has also resulted in building national and local capacity.

Through excellent communication and advocacy provided by MPIs leadership, people across the country at the central, provincial and commune levels are now reasonably informed about MDGs and their importance.

This has greatly helped the government obtain international stakeholders' support for realizing the MDGs.

Localizing MDGs as Vietnam's Development Goals (VDGs) and their integration into the socio-economic development plans (SEDPs) and sectoral plans/programmes at both central and local levels has enabled implementing the MDGs as well as aided in mobilizing additional resources.

MDGs/VDGs integration into the national SEDP monitoring system has led to improvement of the statistical system including data collection, dissemination and utilization for policy formulation and progress monitoring.

Indeed, these experiences have laid a solid foundation which will help Vietnam to not only sustain the results achieved so far, but also complete the unfinished work on MDGs, and implement the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This 2015 MDG report comes at a very critical time. Globally UN member states are concluding the 15-year MDG journey and are now starting to embark on the new post-2015 development agenda of SDGs.

At the same time, Vietnam is formulating its new national 5-year socio-economic development plan (SEDP) 2016-2020, said Vice Minister Phuong.

There are high expectations that this final national MDG report would help to identify what is 'unfinished' work on the MDG agenda, so that this work can be picked up and realized as part of the SDGs.

Vice Minister Phuong underscored the SDGs are on the agenda and are fully expected to be formally adopted by the UN General Assembly this coming September.

The nation's most notable achievement in this final report is that the nation's poverty rate has decreased from 58% in 1993 to the current 8.4% rate, said Vice Minister Phuong, adding- it's an achievement that has not gone unnoticed by the international community.

(Source: VOV News)