(VOVworld) – A workshop to discuss the reported results on sustainable poverty reduction and narrowing the development gap opened in Thai Nguyen province on Tuesday.

The event, organized by the National Assembly’s Committee for social affairs, is also aimed at collecting opinions on the draft report on the implementation of poverty reduction policies for the 2005-2012 period. Deputies agreed that Vietnam’s poverty reduction program was not sustainable because Vietnam had too many related policies while their implementation was slow. In addition, funding management, supervision and utilization mechanisms are lax and overlapping. Vu Quynh Hoa, Coordinator of Oxfam Vietnam’s Advocacy and Communications Program, said: “Vietnam needs to focus on narrowing the gap between gender and opportunity. This should be a priority for narrowing the development gap between the regions.”

The Vietnamese government has spent a large sum of money on poverty reduction and social welfare in recent years. Vietnam’s poverty rate fell from 22% in 2005 to 7.8% in 2013, a year-on-year decrease of 2%.