Remove the "barriers" on the way to the finish line

14:45, 09/28/2023

BHG - The National Target Program (NTP) on New Rural Development (NRD) for the 2021-2025 period in the province has completed more than half of its journey, crystallizing many achievements to improve the appearance of the countryside. However, in order to achieve important goals for the entire period, there is an urgent need to remove "barriers" to build NRD with prosperous agriculture , wealthy farmers, and civilized countryside.

Precious achievements

The OCOP program has contributed to positioning the brands of some key agricultural products of the province, increasing people's income.

With the consistent viewpoint: "Building new rural areas has a starting point but no ending point"; the provincial Party Committee and government have promptly issued many resolutions, thematic resolutions, decisions on policies, plans and guidelines for implementing the National Target Program on building new rural areas in a sustainable and in-depth manner. Along with that, propaganda, mobilization, training and coaching work has been widely deployed, contributing to raising the awareness of cadres, party members and people about the National Target Program on building new rural areas; creating consensus among the entire political system and the whole society to form a new face for the agricultural sector, farmers and rural areas.

The emulation movement "Joining hands to build new rural areas" has been widely deployed in the province, contributing to promoting the role of the subject and the internal strength of the people to participate in building new rural areas. From 2021 to now, the whole province has organized nearly 1,700 campaigns to build new rural areas with nearly 109,000 participants. In particular, people voluntarily donated over 166,000 m2 of land, contributed more than 257,000 working days and nearly 33 billion VND to join hands to build new rural areas. Not only that, implementing the policy of the province supporting cement, the remaining funds mobilized from socialization and people's contributions, the whole province has an additional 868 km of rural concrete roads of all kinds. This result not only increases the total number of communes meeting criterion 2 on transportation to 57/175 communes, but also contributes to realizing the goal of developing a synchronous and modern basic socio-economic infrastructure, ensuring rural-urban connectivity and regional connectivity...

Many components and specialized programs on new rural construction have been flexibly, creatively and effectively implemented by our province, creating an important mark in new rural construction. Up to now, the whole province has 1 unit ( Ha Giang city) recognized by the Prime Minister for completing the task of new rural construction; 48/175 communes have met new rural standards; of which, Phuong Thien commune (Ha Giang city) has met advanced new rural standards. For 127 communes that have not met new rural standards, 3 communes have met 15-18 criteria; 66 communes have met 10-14 criteria; 58 communes have met less than 10 criteria out of a total of 19 new rural criteria. In addition, the whole province has 88 villages recognized as meeting new rural standards, including: 37 villages in extremely difficult areas, 51 villages in communes in regions I and II.

Join hands to remove "barriers"

In the period of 2021 - 2025, our province sets the following goals: 2 districts of Bac Quang and Quang Binh will meet the standards of new rural districts; at the commune level, 35 more communes will meet the standards of new rural districts, bringing the total number of new rural communes to 82/175 communes; 7 advanced new rural communes and 2 model new rural communes. However, to achieve this goal, our province is facing many difficulties that need to be resolved.

People of Huu San commune (Bac Quang) renovate village roads and alleys.

According to the assessment of the Provincial New Rural Area Coordination Office: To complete the new rural area construction targets assigned by the Central Government, our province needs a huge amount of funding, up to nearly 8,800 billion VND. Up to now, districts and cities have only mobilized resources of nearly 2,500 billion VND, reaching 28.3% of the plan; meanwhile, the capital allocated by the Central Government for the New Rural Area Program is very limited, accounting for only 6.7% of the total capital demand, equivalent to 603.3 billion VND. The goal of building new rural areas in our province set out from the beginning of the period is to focus on implementing the criteria of 35 communes in the roadmap to strive to meet the new rural standards in the period of 2021 - 2025, but when the Central Government allocated capital, it was divided equally among the communes, not focusing on the criteria set out in the plan, leading to a lack of capital to implement the criteria.

Not only the above difficulties, the implementation of the National Criteria for New Rural Communes in the period of 2021 - 2025 for our province also poses a significant challenge, when there is an adjustment to increase 8 more criteria and the quality requirements to meet the criteria for New Rural Communes are higher than in the period of 2016 - 2020. Accordingly, the majority of communes, including New Rural Communes, have decreased criteria, especially the income and multidimensional poverty criteria, which are difficult to implement; while the criteria for transportation, education, cultural facilities, and environment have a very large volume of implementation to meet the standards. This leads to a low average of criteria for the whole province, only reaching 11.7 criteria/commune, equal to 71.8% of the set target of 16 criteria/commune. On the other hand, for 35 communes in the plan to achieve NTM standards by 2025, there are 13 communes that meet from 6 to less than 10 criteria/19 NTM criteria; the multidimensional poverty rate is high, so some communes are unlikely to be able to complete the target according to the plan. Currently, only 1 commune meets the multidimensional poverty rate criterion, up to 26 communes must strive to reduce the multidimensional poverty rate from 30 - 65%. Particularly for 48 NTM communes, only 7 communes meet the multidimensional poverty rate criterion; 16 communes have a multidimensional poverty rate exceeding the regulation from 30 - 56%; in the remaining communes, it is also very difficult to achieve this criterion.

According to the Chief of the Provincial New Rural Area Coordination Office Do Tan Son: To successfully implement the National Target Program on New Rural Area Construction in the province, in addition to the determination and drasticness of the entire political system and the consensus among the people; Ha Giang province wishes that the Central Government will supplement the budget of about 400 billion VND for the province to deploy an additional district meeting the New Rural Area standards. Because, based on the current actual situation, it is expected that by the end of 2025, our province will have 1 more district meeting the New Rural Area standards and 1 district completing the target of 100% of communes meeting the New Rural Area standards (not completing the target assigned by the Government of 2 districts meeting the New Rural Area standards). It is proposed that the Central Government consider allowing Ha Giang province to use the budget from the National Target Programs for the period 2021 - 2025, including budget from public service capital, remaining development investment capital due to lack of implementation objects to focus on completing the targets of New Rural Area communes and New Rural Area villages of the province...

Article and photos: THU PHUONG

Source