Hanoi, 23 March 2009
Dear staff,
Over the past few years, the promotion of the Party and State’s policies and implementation of the hunger elimination and poverty reduction in our country have had great achievements, contributing to ensure political stability and social security, to enhance practical and spiritual aspects of life for citizens, particularly in the ethnic groups, which have seen the average rate of poor families reduced from 60% in 1990 to 13.2% in 2008. The VDB is proud of having great contributions to the common achievements, as a tool of the government to implement investment projects, export contracts, to support industries and underdeveloped areas to highlight the country’s potentials.
However, under the government’s assessment, it is not the stable achievement in poverty reduction and the gap between rich and poor citizen groups is not yet narrowed, particularly in high level poverty rate districts.
In order to continuously speed up the hunger elimination and poverty reduction, together with other macro measures, the Government promulgated the Resolution No. 30a/2008/NQ-CP on 27 December 2008 to launch out the Rapid and Stable Poverty Reduction Supporting Programme applied in 61 poor districts of 20 provinces whose half of the citizens are poor. The objectives are to make more rapid changes to the poor’s practical and spiritual lives, to ensure there’s no difference between these districts and others in the area in 2020, to reduce the number of poor families to less than 40% and basically no more families who have to live in ... houses, to raise the number of rural workers taking part in training courses to over 25%.
To implement the Government’s Resolution, Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Welfare assigned VDB to directly support 3 poor districts of Lao Cai province, including Si Ma Cai, Muong Khuong and Bac Ha.
On 3 March 2009, VDB’s General Director set the Steering Commitee to figure out the supporting solution for the 3 poor districts as assigned by the Government.
Dear my colleagues,
Over the past years, our VDB system’s staff have made many efforts in fulfilling the task assigned by the Prime Minister, contributing to build a society of commonwealth, equality, democracy and civilization. Many teams and individuals have become good models by practical activities in order to enrich the localities, enterprises and to promote the development of the country’s key industries, and to support poor communes, to take care of heroic Vietnamese Mothers, severe war invalids and children who have difficulties in struggling for life… It is our morality and responsibility to compensate families and individuals by whom our country was saved, to share with people who have difficult lives. The Executive Board and Steering Committee of the Resolution No. 30a/2008/NQ-CP of the VDB acknowledge and commend these teams and individuals.
To implement the tasks, the Executive Board will have a detailed plan after having the same voice with leaders of Lao Cai province and the target districts. Supporting the 3 poor districts is a long lasting task, which is considered as morality as well as responsibility of the VDB. Together with looking for investors, joining the investment projects, exporting contracts and exploiting these districts’ potentials, we need to have specific activities to share and to support the ethnic families who are facing many difficulties these days.
I look forward to seeing the VDB’s staff spending some of your monthly incomes to contribute to the common fund to express our bank’s morality and responsibility to poor people. I do hope leaders of the Head Quarter and Operation Departments as well as of our branches to have good implementation of these objectives. Of course I do understand that as the state-own organizations’ workers, you have a lot of difficulties, however, to help people who face worse or much worse situations is our happiness.
I wait for any initiatives and specific and practical activities from the unions, including youth union, women’s union, and all of you to go along with the bank to fulfill the implementation of the task assigned by the government and the PM to our VDB.
I wish you good health and happiness.
Yours sincerely,
Nguyen Quang Dung,
General Director
Vietnam Development Bank