Hanoi  – Vietnamese families who climbed out of poverty in recent years are in danger of slipping below the line again because of the global economic crisis, Vietnamese media reported Tuesday.

The warning came from Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem at the opening of a meeting of donors to Vietnam in the poor Central Highland’s province of Dac Lac.

“Due to the economic difficulties, many households who have escaped poverty now face the risk of poverty relapse,” Khiem said Monday, adding that it “erodes the efforts that the donors, the government and the Vietnamese people have exerted so far.”

While several representatives of the donors, called the Consultative Group for Vietnam, commended the country for implementing an economic stimulus package of more than 8 billion dollars to cope with the crisis, they said more was needed to help vulnerable groups such as women, children, ethnic minorities and migrant workers.

Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank director for Vietnam, said the crisis presented a unique opportunity for the country to address some of the weakest links in its socioeconomic development.

Khiem acknowledged that the crisis already had serious effects on many remote areas of the country, including the Central Highlands, where he said, “The economy remains underdeveloped, lives of ethnic minority communities stays hard and the poverty rate is still high.”

The VietNam News daily last week quoted new research from a government think tank that farmers in rural areas were the first victims of the economic downturn, proven by a rise in jobless rates and the percentage of hungry homes as well as in cuts for household expenses.

According to the research by the Vietnamese Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development, 22 per cent of migrant workers have returned to their home provinces since the beginning of the year after having lost their jobs in industrialized areas.

Institute director Dang Kim Son also said the economic slowdown had caused many households to fall below the poverty line, while Vu Trong Binh, director of its Rural Development Centre said that the government’s stimulus package had not been efficient in rural areas.

Since 1993, Vietnam has received official development assistance from 50 donors, who have pledged total loans of 50 billion dollars. In that period, the rate of poor households measured by international norms fell from 58 per cent in 1993 to 12.5 per cent in 2008.

Last year, Vietnam attained an economic growth rate of 6.2 per cent. In the first quarter of 2009, the growth rate rested at 3.1 per cent but was expected to rise to 5 per cent for the year. (dpa)