Tran Van Truyen, head of the Government Inspectorate

Vietnam’s government will implement a three-year program to strengthen its capacity to detect and deal with corruption cases, the chief government inspector, Tran Van Truyen, said at a press briefing Tuesday.

In the immediate future, the inspectorate will center its surveillance on land issues, finance, banking and activities of state-owned corporations and economic groups.

It will also intensify monitoring of the use of state power, and work to build a fair and transparent business environment.

The inspectorate will improve the inspection, auditing and investigation of corruption cases, and increase the society’s role in preventing corruption.

Plans for poorest districts

Also at the regular monthly press briefing held by the government, Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs, Le Bach Hong, mentioned a program discussed by the government earlier this month to rapidly and sustainably reduce poverty in the poorest districts nationwide.

The program envisages reducing poverty rate in the districts to below 40 percent, he said.

It also targets cutting agricultural labor to 60 percent of the total workforce, and increasing the ratio of skilled rural laborers to over 35 percent in 2015.

To considerably raise the living standards of district residents by 2020, the country will continue to support poor households in accessing loans, developing production, maintaining environmental hygiene, and providing education, health and vocational training services.

As of 2006, Vietnam’s 61 poorest districts, mainly in mountainous areas inhabited by ethnic minority people in 20 provinces including Ha Giang, Cao Bang, Lao Cai, Yen Bai, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An and Lam Dong, had poverty rates of over 50 percent, according to the ministry.

Two child policy

Under a draft amended population ordinance scheduled to be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National Assembly for consideration in December, Vietnam couples can only have one or two children. The current law allows couples to decide the number of children they have.

The number of families having three children or more increased by 13.4 percent in the first half of this year over the same period last year.

Another report released at the press briefing estimates Vietnam to record an export turnover of US$10.2 billion in the remaining two months, raising the annual figure to US$64 billion, up 31.8 percent over last year.

Reported by Bao Van