This evaluation report of the National Targeted Programme on Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction and Programme 135 acknowledges the achievements of both programmes. But in order to improve the programmes in the future, the report also highlights some issues for the next phase from 2006-2010, to have greater impact on the well-being of Viet Nam’s poor.

In particular the report recommends improved targetting of poor households to increase the efficiency of the programmes and incentives for poor households to escape poverty. It also recommends strengthening staff capacity at various levels, especially at the commune level and of local leaders of mass organizations; developing an efficient and effective programme monitoring and evaluation system; and better efforts to implement Grassroots Democracy.

Formally launched in 1998 as Programme 133 and targeted at poor households across the country, the HEPR programme consists of six policies offering free healthcare, school tuition waivers, support to ethnic minorities, support to vulnerable people, and funding for housing and production tools.  Additionally, the programme comprises eight projects on credit, extension, infrastructure, production assistance, training of cadres, settlement of migrants into new economic zones, sedentarisation and settlement in poor communes and developing models for replication. It was combined with Programme 120 in 2001 and extended up to 2005 as Programme 143.

Programme 135 (P135), or the Programme for socio-economic Development in Communes faced with Extreme Difficulties was also approved in July 1998. Initially, covering 1,715 communes, of which 1,568 were mountainous and 147 were in lowland areas, P135 covered around 1.1 million households and over 6 million people. It has recently been expanded to cover 2,362 poor and remote communes. With a total investment of about VND5,600 billion, from 1998-2003, P135 has focused primarily on developing village and communal infrastructure as well as inter-communal infrastructure.