ລາວໂຮມລາວ ເພື່ອປະຊາທິປະໄຕ

Local authorities have submitted a request for 7.38 trillion kip in government funding, identifying the money as essential for accomplishing rural development and poverty reduction goals in Laos by 2015.

However, Vice President of the National Leading Committee for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication Mr Savang Sihavong said the government has only allotted 2.8 trillion kip to achieve development targets.

“It’s very challenging because we’re not only facing budgetary shortfalls but also human resource challenges and we need to identify ways to obtain more funding and capacity to achieve our goals in the next five years,” he said.

The lack of capacity has led the government to prioritise 64 focus areas where it will commit the majority of the funding and human resources that are available.

The regions include former revolutionary areas and remote and mountainous territories home to multiple ethnic groups because these tend to be the poorest in the country.

Of the 64 areas, 10 will be the responsibility of the central government and the remaining areas will be the responsibility of local authorities.

Mr Savang said the main projects would be the merging of smaller, individual villages into single village groups and then allocating land and providing permanent employment so that villagers can earn a living.

Other projects will involve the establishment of local commercial industries to create income for residents, infrastructure development in rural areas, the improvement of social and cultural services and capacity building for local authorities.

All these projects are necessary to ensure sustainable development and achieve long-term, permanent poverty alleviation for local people. The committee completed a survey on poverty in Laos in July this year to help the government identify priority areas for the next five years.

While the number of poor families in the nation has declined to 18.96 percent and the number of poor districts to 54 nationwide, the study revealed a distinct regionalisation of poverty in the country.

The provinces that have the highest number of villages categorised as poor are in the mountainous provinces of Phongsaly, Huaphan, Oudomxay and the southern provinces of Attapeu and Xekong.

This means that these areas need to be prioritised and provided with more funding, human resources and support to ensure that the number of poor families can be reduced to meet the government’s target of 10 percent by 2015.

The study went on to identify important areas that the government needs to focus on including the improvement of people’s living standards and infrastructure development including roads.

The committee says it will conduct a survey to assess poverty levels in Laos every year to help the government evaluate the situation, address problems immediately and track the effectiveness of various initiatives.

Poverty reduction is one of the four ‘breakthrough approaches’ set by the 9th Party Congress in March this year in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and remove Laos from the list of Least Developed Countries by 2020.