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Delta land reform falters on lack of funds
Provinces in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta are making an effort to implement a Government decision to provide housing and agricultural land to poor ethnic minorities but they have run into a road block: Land prices are much higher than the amount of money the families get from the government.
The decision seeks to ensure all disadvantaged ethnic minority families conditions have their own housing land by 2010, over 80 per cent of poor households have farmlands and stable jobs, and 50 per cent of working-age people get job training.
With just a few months to go for the deadline, several of the provinces have not achieved even 50 per cent of the target.
At the end of the first quarter, Tra Vinh Province, for example, had only achieved 29 per cent of the residential-land target and 7.2 per cent of the agricultural-land target.
Under the decision, each household will get a maximum of VND20 million to acquire farmland, including VND10 million each from the central budget and free-interest loans.
But with this amount, the beneficiaries cannot buy the minimum of 0.15 ha envisaged in the decision since the market price is now VND60 million per 0.15 ha, according to the province's Committee for Ethnic Minorities.
While the 0.15ha limit is for lands where two wet-rice crops can be grown, for single-crop lands the limit is 0.25ha and in case of hill tracts or land for aquaculture, it is 0.5ha.
In Tra Vinh there are still more than 1,000 households who have not got the lands.
In Soc Trang, which has the largest ethnic minority population in the delta, only 43 per cent have received residential land and 44 per cent, farmland.
Kim Luoi, deputy head of the province's Committee for Ethnic Minorities, said the problem is that the grant amount is too low compared to the price of rice fields.
Only some districts like Vinh Chau, My Xuyen, and Tran De have been able to implement the programme since they had land to gift, he said.
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