RESOLUTION

APPROVAL OF MASTER PLAN FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF ETHNIC MINORITY AND MOUNTAINOUS REGIONS FOR 2021-2030 PERIOD

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Pursuant to the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam;

Pursuant to the Law on National Assembly Organization No. 57/2014/QH13;

Pursuant to the Resolution No. 101/2019/QH14 in the 6^th Meeting of the XIV^th National Assembly declared on November 20, 2018;

In the light of the Government’s Statement No. 473/TTr-CP dated October 11, 2019; the Evaluation Report No. 1016 /BC-HDDT14 dated October 17, 2019 of the Ethnic Council; the Report on Feedbacks and Explanations about National Assembly Deputy’s Opinions No. 477/BC-UBTVQH14 dated November 15, 2019 of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee; and after considering opinions from the National Assembly’s deputies,

HEREBY RESOLVES

Article 1.

The National Assembly hereby ratifies the Master Plan for socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous regions for the 2021-2030 period with the following contents:

1. Viewpoints

- Reviewing, amending, supplementing and perfecting the system of policies and laws related to ethnic minorities and mountainous areas. Policies on socio-economic development, national defense and security in ethnic minorities and mountainous areas must be comprehensive, aiming at the goals of sustainable development and promotion of their advantages and potentials as well as their self-reliance. Promoting propaganda campaigns in ethnic minority and mountainous areas; strengthening social consensus; promoting internal resources, overcoming difficulties, challenges and aligning their development with the entire country’s growth; consolidating the great unity of the entire nation and the faith of the people in the Party and the State;

- Taking best advantage of all resources, exploiting potentials and strengths to develop ethnic minorities and mountainous areas; preserving and promoting fine cultural identities of all ethnic groups. Focusing on effectively solving pressing problems; promoting vocational training and placement activities. Integrating and ensuring gender equality in the process of formulating and implementing the Plan;

- Realizing that state-controlled resources are important and decisive; strengthening international cooperation, diversifying and privatizing resources, mobilizing, attracting and promoting all available resources invested in the rapid and sustainable development; improving the efficiency and expanding preferential credit capital for projects, households, individuals, and organizations to develop their production and business in ethnic minorities and mountainous areas;

- Realizing that investments in the socio-economic development of ethnic minorities and mountainous areas are those investments in the sustainable development of the entire country, improving the material and spiritual life of the people; gradually narrowing the gap between living standards or income of ethnic minorities and the average living standard or income of the people;

- Performing the tasks of the socio-economic development of ethnic minorities and mountainous areas associated with the construction of strong political systems at the grassroots level; strengthening national defense and security potentials, firmly defending the national border sovereignty, and building border lines according to peace, friendship, mutual cooperation and development principles;

- Integrating policies to ensure their consistency and unity, reducing the number of supervisory focal points, assigning tasks in a explicit manner; promoting the roles and functions of authorities in charge of ethnic affairs; ensuring and improving the efficiency of sources of investment; prioritizing key, main and concentrated investments in areas faced with special difficulties and ethnic groups faced with particular difficulties in ethnic minorities and mountainous areas.

2. Objectives

a) Overall objectives:

Exploiting potentials and advantages of localities in the same regions, innovating, promoting the economic development, ensuring implementation of social security policies; ensuring fast and sustainable poverty reduction, narrowing the gap between living standards and income of ethnic minorities and the average living standard or income in the entire country; gradually reducing the number of extremely underprivileged communes and villages; making stabilization plans and arrangements for the population, building synchronous and inter-regional socio-economic infrastructure systems in connection with other developed regions; comprehensively developing education, training, health care and culture sectors; remarkably improving the lives of the people; improving the number and quality of public officials, civil servants, and public employees coming from ethnic minorities; conserving and promoting the fine cultural identities of ethnic minorities together with abolishing obsolete customs and practices; ensuring gender equality and addressing urgent issues for women and children; establishing strong political systems at the grassroots level, firmly maintaining political security, social order and safety, and ensuring the national border security; consolidating and strengthening the great unity among ethnic groups, and elevating the faith of ethnic minorities in the Party and the State.

b) Specific goals to be attained by 2025:

- Striving to increase the average income of ethnic minorities by more than 2 times compared to 2020;

- Striving to hold down the rate of poor households in ethnic minorities by over 3%;

- Striving to ensure that 100% of communes have asphalted or concrete roads leading to their commune downtowns; 70% of villages have hardened motor roads leading to their village downtowns. 100% of local schools, classrooms and clinics are solidly built; 99% of households have access to the national electricity grids and other suitable power sources; 90% of ethnic minorities have access to potable water; 100% of ethnic minorities can watch television and listen to radio;

- Basically completing the residential sedentarization and agricultural settlement work; stably arranging and settling 90% of the migrant households not covered by planning schemes. Planning, arranging, moving and resettling 60% of ethnic minority households with scattered settlements in special-use forests, remote and isolated areas, and places at risk of pipe floods, flash floods and landslides. Basically solving a shortage of residential and production land for the ethnic minority people;

- Striving to attaining the goal of ensuring that the percentage of 5-year-old pupils going to school is over 98%; the percentage of primary school pupils is more than 97%; the percentage of secondary school pupils is over 95%; the percentage of high school pupils is over 60%; the Vietnamese-language literacy rate for all people aged 15 and over is more than 90%;

- Strengthening the healthcare work so that ethnic minorities can access modern health care services; continuing to control and take steps to eliminate epidemics in ethnic minorities and mountainous areas; striving to ensure 98% of ethnic minorities participate in the health insurance plan. Striving to attain the goal of ensuring that more than 80% of pregnant women receive periodic antenatal care, give birth at health facilities or with the help of health workers; reducing the prevalence of underweight malnutrition in children to under 15%;

- Striving to attain the goal of ensuring that 50% of employees of working age are trained in accordance with the particular needs and conditions of ethnic minorities;

- Conserving and developing fine traditional cultural values and identities of all ethnic groups; ensuring that 80% of the villages have community houses; 50% of the villages have traditional cultural and performance art teams (clubs) operating in a regular and high-quality manner;

- Training, planning and building a contingent of ethnic minority officials, especially local ethnic minorities. Ensuring the rate of ethnic minority officials, public servants and employees is commensurate with the local ethnic minority population rate.

c) Further goals to be attained by 2030

- The average income of ethnic minorities is half as much as the national gross average income;

- Reducing poor households to under 10%. Striving to attain the goal of ensuring that there will be basically none of extremely under privileged communes and villages; 70% of the ethnic minorities and mountainous communes will reach the standards applied to new rural areas;

- Bringing about the shift in the proportion of rural labor forces in ethnic minorities areas through which 3% of workers each year are attracted to move to other sectors and industries such as industry, handicraft, tourism and service. Striving to attain the goal of ensuring, by 2030, 40% of ethnic minority workers will be able to work in various sectors and industries such as industry, handicraft, tourism and services;

- Striving to reach 80% of ethnic minority farmers able to get involved in the economy of agriculture – forestry commodities;

- Eliminating the situations of makeshift housing and ignorance; preventing ecological and environmental degradation; maintaining and increasing the forest cover rate;

- Striving to attain the goal of ensuring that more than 85% of communes and villages in ethnic minority and mountainous areas have adequate infrastructure to meet socio-economic development requirements and demands of the ethnic people in their everyday life;

- Radically addressing unplanned migration among ethnic minorities. Planning, arranging, moving and resettling 100% of ethnic minority households with dispersed and scattered settlements in special-use forests, remote and isolated areas, and places likely to be inflicted by pipe floods, flash floods and landslides;

- Basically completing the targets set out in the National Goal for sustainable development by 2030.

3. Scope and subjects of this Resolution

a) Scope:

This Plan shall be implemented in ethnic minority and mountainous communes and villages during the period of 2021-2030. In particular, priority must be given to investments in extremely underprivileged ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

b) Subjects:

- Ethnic minorities and mountainous communes and villages;

- Ethnic minority households and individuals;

- Kinh ethnic households and individuals below or near the poverty line that are living in extremely underprivileged communes and villages;

- Enterprises, cooperatives, economic and social organization operating in extremely underprivileged areas.

4. Major duties and approaches

a) Formulating the National Target Program on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas for the 2021-2030 period, including the following projects:

(1) Project on addressing a shortage of residential land, houses, production land and potable water;

(2) Project on planning, arranging, settling and stabilizing residents at necessary places;

(3) Project on developing agricultural and forestry production, and promoting potentials and strengths of regions to produce commodities based on value chains;

(4) Project on investment in essential infrastructure supporting production and living activities in ethnic minority and mountainous areas, and at public service providers in the ethnic sector;

(5) Project on developing training, education and improving the quality of human resources;

(6) Project on conserving and promoting fine traditional cultural values of ethnic groups associated with developing tourism;

(7) Project on taking care of public health, and improving the physical condition and stature of ethnic minority people; preventing and controlling child malnutrition;

(8) Project on implementing gender equality and addressing urgent issues for women and children;

(9) Project on investment in developing ethnic groups with very small population and ethnic minorities facing many difficulties;

(10) Project on conducting communication, dissemination and propaganda campaigns in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. Inspecting, supervising and assessing the implementation of the Program.

b) Setting and promulgating criteria for classification of ethnic minority and mountainous areas according to their developmental level in a comprehensive, objective, scientific and accurate manner which are used as a basis to identify target subjects and geographical areas given priority to receive key and main investments.

c) Strengthening scientific researches and technology transfers; setting up the synchronous database for ethnic minority and mountainous areas to serve the purposes of forecasting, planning and managing the implementation of ethnic policies.

d) Mobilizing all available resources used for the socio-economic development investment in ethnic minority and mountainous areas, especially State-owned resources that play important and decisive roles in marshalling other resources. Strengthening international cooperation on ethnic affairs and implementation of ethnic policies.

dd) Improving the effectiveness and efficiency of state management of ethnic affairs, implementation of ethnic policies, and the struggle against all manifestations of corruption, extravagance and misconduct. Adjusting and supplementing the functions and tasks of the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs so that they will become the sole focal point tasked with supervising and synthesizing ethnic policies; proposing and participating in the evaluation of policies and investment projects related to ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

e) Logically planning, training, educating and employing ethnic minority officials according to the Politburo's Conclusion No. 65-KL/TW dated October 30, 2019 on the continued implementation of the Resolution No. 24-NQ/TW of the IX^th Central Party Committee on ethnic affairs in the new developments, and the Prime Minister’s Decision No. 402/QD-TTg dated March 14, 2016, approving the Plan for development of the contingent of public officials, civil servants and public employees coming from ethnic minorities in the new period. Adopting particular policies on recruitment of public officials and civil servants for ethnic minority people, especially ethnic minority groups with very small population and ethnic minority groups remaining in difficult situations. Focusing on discovering, planning and training high-quality human resources and duly implementing employment and treatment policies for ethnic minority officials.

g) Strengthening the construction and consolidation of the political system, building the solid posture of the people’s national defense and security in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. Promptly commending, honoring and encouraging well-reputed persons, businessmen and scientists in ethnic minority communities who have made great contributions to the Homeland construction and defense.

h) Renovating and expanding credit lines of the social policy bank with a view to increasing the credit limit and ensuring that production and business projects aimed at creating livelihood for ethnic minorities are able to have access to credit facilities.

5. Budget for implementation of the Plan

All funds for the National Target Program on the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas during the 2021-2030 period shall be synthesized as a state capital component of the public investment capital entry existing at various budget levels prescribed in the Law on State Budget and the Law on Public Investment and shall be proposed by the Government to seek the National Assembly’s ratification.

Article 2.

The National Assembly shall authorize the Government to lead the implementation of the following tasks:

1. Reviewing legal documents related to ethnic minority and mountainous areas and ethnic policies, promptly proposing, amending, supplementing, replacing and abolishing related documents that are no longer appropriate to ensure the uniformity and consistency of the entire legal system with the aim of effectively implementing the Plan.

2. Formulating the National Target Program on the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas during the 2021-2030 period, and proposing it to seek the ratification and approval by the National Assembly in the 9^th session (held in May 2020) so that it can commence in 2021.

3. Establishing the Steering Committee of National Target Program on the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas during the period of 2021-2030 which is run by a Deputy Prime Minister appointed as the Steering Committee's Chair; the Minister cum Chief of the Committee for Ethnic Affairs appointed as the Steering Committee’s standing Vice Chair, and joined by relevant ministries, departments and sectors to assist in administering and supervising the implementation of the Program.

4. In light of the scope of effect, target beneficiaries, subject matters and specific tasks, after making budgetary synthesis and balancing efforts, the Government shall make an estimate of the final budget for the National Target Program on the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas during the 2021-2030 period, and then submit it to the National Assembly to seek its ratification and decision as provided by law.

5. On an annual basis, the Government shall prepare a report on the results of the implementation of the National Target Program on the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas during the 2021-2030 period, and then representing it to the National Assembly; after 5 years of implementation of the Program, carrying out assessment and seeking the National Assembly’s approval of mechanisms and policies for the ongoing implementing of the Program for the 2026 – 2030 period.

Article 3.

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee, the Committee for Ethnic Affairs on Financial and Budget Affairs, the Ethnic Council, the National Assembly’s Committees, National Assembly’s Delegations and National Assembly’s deputies shall, within their remit and jurisdiction prescribed by law, supervise the implementation of this Resolution.

The Resolution is passed in the 8^th session of the XIV^th National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on November 18, 2019.