National Growth and Poverty Eradication Strategy

The National Poverty Eradication Programme (NPEP) has been renamed by the Government of the Lao PDR in order to avoid confusion with the 8 national programmes and to better reflect its true substance. This decision was based on suggestions of the National Assembly and other national stakeholders. The new name adopted after internal consultations is the National Growth and Poverty Eradication Strategy (NGPES). The NGPES is the strategic framework under which all of the Government's future growth and poverty eradication programmes will be developed and implemented. The NGPES is the result of a process that started in 1996 when the 6 th Party Congress defined the long-term development objective as freeing the country from the status of least-developed country (LDC) by 2020. Exiting the status of LDC requires eradicating poverty in a sustainable manner. Adhering to this conviction, the Government presented at the 7 th Roundtable Meeting in November 2000 its medium-term strategic approach: " Fighting Poverty through Human Resource Development, Rural Development and People's Participation ". The NGPES is a comprehensive framework for growth and development, and has a particular focus on the improvement of the poverty situation in the poorest districts. It has thus a dual objective: enhancing growth and development, and reducing poverty. The NGPES is designed to accelerate the positive trend in reducing poverty in the Lao PDR. Poverty has decreased dramatically over the last decade, from 45 per cent of the population in 1992/93 to about 30 per cent in 2002/03. The implementation of the NGPES requires a synergetic undertaking based on four main sectors, several supporting sectors, cross-sector priorities and a series of specific, poverty-related national programmes. The evolving nature of the strategy demonstrates that it is as much a process as a document. Many of the issues raised in the document will therefore be addressed during the implementation phase. As such, the NGPES is both a point of arrival and a point of departure. As the NGPES clearly states, it is the Government's firm commitment to gradually lessen the Lao PDR's high dependency on official development assistance (ODA). This will happen progressively and result from the consistent efforts undertaken to create a broad base for country-wide growth and from the many significant investments in the national resource base which will yield substantial revenues to the budget, over time. This, together with a greatly improved tax administration and the systematic enhancement of all economic …