Nghe An: Striving to have 34 more communes meeting advanced new rural standards by 2023

The comrades chairing the conference. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Afternoon of November 25,Office of coordination of new rural program of Nghe An provinceorganized a conference on "Summary of advisory work to support the implementation of the national target program on new rural construction in 2023, deployment of tasks in 2023 and review and appraisal work for the period 2021-2025". Attending and chairing the conference were representatives of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Provincial New Rural Program Coordination Office, and the Rural Development Sub-Department.

In 2022, the economy begins to recover after the pandemic, localities are both developing the economy and building new rural areas, so they face many difficulties; The communes registered to meet new rural standards in 2022 are all communes in mountainous areas, with difficult economies and limited resource mobilization. This is also the first year of implementing the set of criteria for building new rural areas at all levels for the 2021-2025 period, so there are many new contents and targets with higher requirements and more difficult to implement; Capital and cement are allocated slowly due to many reasons...

Anh Son residents contribute working days to build local projects. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Overcoming those difficulties, with the drastic and active participation, the national program targets for new rural construction in Nghe An in 2022 were basically completed. Accordingly, it is expected that by the end of 2022, 10 more communes will meet new rural standards; 22 more communes will meet advanced new rural standards; 4 more communes will meet model new rural standards; 2 more districts will meet new rural standards (Do Luong district and Dien Chau district); 36 more products will be recognized as OCOP (3-star standard). On average, the whole province will reach 16.92 criteria/commune.

In addition to the achieved results, the conference frankly pointed out the shortcomings such as: slow consultation work, low quality, slow issuance of documents guiding the implementation of criteria by sectors, slow consultation on cement allocation; some localities synthesized proposals for capital plans for the period 2021-2025 and 2022 slowly and adjusted proposals many times, slowing down the progress of synthesis and submission to the Provincial People's Committee by the program's standing agency; many localities have only focused on implementing the new rural criteria contents undertaken by the commune level, not really paying full attention to the implementation of contents at the village, hamlet and household levels.

Representatives of the Department of Finance discuss the supply of cement for new rural construction. Photo: Thanh Phuc

At the conference, representatives of localities, departments and branches gave opinions and proposed support policies; at the same time shared experiences and good practices in the process of implementing the national target program on new rural construction.

In particular, focusing on issues such as: The delay in supporting cement for localities affects the progress of infrastructure construction; communes that have not met the new rural standards are all mountainous communes with many difficulties, so the mobilization of resources to implement the criteria is still limited; it is necessary to balance and raise the new rural commune bonus to a higher level to suit the new situation. Particularly in mountainous communes with special difficulties, when they have met the new rural standards, all support policies are cut off, so people are less motivated...

Besides, there are difficulties and shortcomings in implementing criteria on cultural institutions and environmental criteria in new rural construction.

Mr. Ho Phi Trieu - Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development concluded the conference. Photo: Thanh Phuc