New rural criteria increase local initiative

(Chinhphu.vn) - The draft set of national criteria for new rural areas has been developed based on proposals from ministries, branches and localities (from the end of 2024), and at the same time, opinions were sought at a number of meetings in the first 6 months of 2025.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Tran Thanh Nam speaks at the workshop - Photo: VGP/Do Huong

On July 25 in Hanoi, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment held a consultation workshop on the National Criteria for New Rural Areas at all levels in the coming period.

Regarding the implementation of the National Criteria for New Rural Areas in the 2021-2025 period, Mr. Ngo Truong Son, Chief of the Central Office for New Rural Areas Coordination, said: The criteria have played an important role as a tool to help localities plan, organize, implement and monitor the new rural area construction program.

Up to now, many criteria have achieved high implementation rates, specifically, 7 criteria such as: Planning, Irrigation and disaster prevention, Electricity, Rural commercial infrastructure, Information and communication, Education and training, National defense and security, have been achieved by over 95% of communes. The Red River Delta leads the country in the rate of communes and districts meeting new rural standards.

However, there are still criteria with limited results such as income, multidimensional poverty reduction, environment and food safety. In addition, the late issuance of the new rural criteria for the 2021-2025 period (March 2022) affects the progress of planning and implementation in localities...

Mr. Son said that in the period of 2026-2030, the Criteria Set will continue to be updated with many new points such as dividing into 3 groups of communes according to the level of development to apply the appropriate level of criteria; supplementing the Criteria Set of modern new rural communes, not regulating model new rural communes but localities must regulate and implement them in accordance with the outstanding strengths of each locality; increasing decentralization to localities; at the same time ensuring effective integration of other National Target Programs, especially the Sustainable Poverty Reduction Program.

At the workshop, representatives of ministries, sectors and localities also actively contributed ideas around the new rural criteria in the fields of culture, security and order, and introduced the happiness criteria and smart village criteria. Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam said that these contributions will be an important basis for the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to coordinate with relevant units to continue perfecting the National Criteria for New Rural Areas at all levels for the period 2026-2030.

Many delegates attending the workshop agreed with the Draft Criteria for Communes, dividing communes into 3 groups according to development level, including:

Group 1 communes are poor communes, or communes in region II (difficult communes) and communes in region III (especially difficult communes) in ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

Group 2 communes are communes with agricultural land area accounting for 70% or more of the total natural land area of the commune.

Group 3 communes are communes whose administrative boundaries are adjacent to wards and whose population density as of July 1, 2025 is from 1,000 people/km2 or more, or communes formed from the arrangement with towns (before July 1, 2025), or communes with the proportion of agriculture in the economic structure of less than 10%, or communes oriented as new urban areas.

For communes, the set of criteria includes 9 criteria: Planning; Socio-economic infrastructure; Rural economy; Human resource quality; Culture - Society; Environment and landscape; Political system and Public administration; Science and technology and digital transformation; Access to law and security, national defense. The naming and grouping of content is relative, so the Deputy Minister hopes that delegates will discuss it more thoroughly.

Commenting on the new rural criteria for the period 2026-2030 in the environmental field, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen The Chinh - former Director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment said: Environmental criteria is one of the three basic groups of criteria in the trio of economic, social and environmental criteria for sustainable development in general and rural areas in particular, so the construction of new rural criteria at the commune and provincial levels must clearly demonstrate the group of environmental criteria.

At the same time, the development of environmental criteria should be based on the Party's policies and orientations expressed in issued documents, especially Resolutions, policy documents, and laws of the State such as the Strategy, planning, and environmental plans to 2030, vision to 2050, and environmental legal documents. Accordingly, with the draft of 3 levels of new rural criteria at the commune level and 2 levels of new rural criteria at the provincial level, it is necessary to review and further improve environmental criteria.

Regarding the new rural criteria for the period 2026-2030 in the field of planning and rural infrastructure, Dr. Architect Pham Thi Nham, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Urban and Rural Planning, Ministry of Construction, commented that planning and infrastructure criteria need to promote their role as solid pillars in shaping quality living spaces, promoting commodity production, improving community organization capacity and adapting to modern development trends such as urbanization, digital transformation, and climate change.

Ms. Nham believes that stratifying according to the level of new rural communes, advanced new rural communes, modern new rural communes and grouping communes according to difficult regions, urbanized communes, communes commonly associated with agricultural production, and clearly defining the roles between the commune and provincial levels will not only help the set of criteria to be more feasible in practical implementation, but also create the basis for an effective, inclusive and sustainable rural development process.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Tran Thanh Nam said that in the context of restructuring ministries and local authorities, there have been many changes compared to before, so the Criteria Set also needs to be reviewed and re-evaluated to suit the new reality. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment hopes that ministries, branches and localities will continue to provide comments so that the Ministry can soon complete the draft Criteria Set and submit it to competent authorities in accordance with regulations.

Regarding the completion of the criteria set, one of the important contents is how to divide communes into groups according to actual conditions. According to Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam, dividing into 3 groups of communes is necessary to ensure that the construction of new rural areas is suitable to the actual conditions of each locality, in order to help localities proactively apply appropriate criteria. The Deputy Minister asked delegates to give their opinions on the division of communes into groups.

Do Huong

Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/bo-tieu-chi-nong-thon-moi-tang-tinh-chu-dong-cho-dia-phuong-102250725175844861.htm