From January 1, 2019, the policy of direct support for poor households in difficult areas will be abolished.

Accordingly,Decision No. 25/2018/QD-TTgwill take effect from January 1, 2019, abolishing Decision No. 102/2009/QD-TTg on direct support policy for poor households in difficult areas.

Localities are allowed to use the funding source for implementing Decision No. 102/2009/QD-TTg that has been stably arranged in the regular expenditure estimate for the period of stabilizing the local budget 2017 - 2020 to pay instead of the central budget support to implement social security policies in the locality according to the provisions of Decision 579/QD-TTg dated April 28, 2017 of the Prime Minister on the principle of targeted support from the central budget for local budgets to implement social security policies in the period 2017 - 2020.

Illustration photo.

According to the Ethnic Committee, after 8 years of implementation, the policy of direct support for poor households in disadvantaged areas has supported over 40 million people, contributing practically to improving the lives of poor households and socio-economic development in disadvantaged areas. The results achieved in the process of implementing the policy have profound significance, positively impacting the socio-economic development of ethnic and mountainous areas in general and disadvantaged areas in particular.

However, due to changes in policy mechanisms and economic transformation, the policies under Decision 102/2009/QD-TTg are no longer suitable and need to be adjusted to suit the current situation. Because the previous design policy was direct support in the form of grants, it was only suitable in the short term, the long-term effectiveness was limited and lacked sustainability; a group of people appeared to rely on state policies, without the awareness to rise up and escape poverty. The support policy was implemented for a long time, but the support level was not adjusted, was still too low, not strong enough to support production development, hunger eradication and poverty reduction in difficult areas, and did not achieve the set policy goals. Currently, in addition to the direct support policy for the poor in disadvantaged areas, there are other policies to support production development for the poor in disadvantaged areas (National target programs, policies managed by the Ethnic Committee...) which make the effectiveness and significance of the direct support policy under Decision 102/2009/QD-TTg increasingly meaningless in practice.