Ngirente: Govt to sustain social protection efforts to reduce poverty

Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente has reaffirmed the government commitment to sustaining socio-economic programmes for greater gains in poverty reduction and welfare improvement for Rwandans. He said this on Thursday, June 19, as he delivered a presentation to the Parliament on the government’s actions and achievements in enhancing the living standards of Rwandans. All the socio-economic programmes that the country implemented had a great contribution in improving the welfare of Rwandans, “especially the 1.5 million people who were lifted out of poverty,” in the last seven years, Ngirente said, citing the findings of the seventh Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (EICV 7), by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) published on April 16. The survey showed that the national poverty rate fell from 39.8 per cent in 2017 to 27.4 per cent in 2024 – a decline of 12.4 percentage points. It indicated that an average 214,000 people were lifted out of poverty every year. ALSO READ: Rwanda lifted 1.5m people out of poverty since 2017 – survey Ngirente said that the government’s initiatives also protected Rwandans who were above the poverty line from losing employment due to shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic. “We realise that all the programmes that the government executed transformed the living conditions of Rwandans and the government plans to sustain them and to achieve even more,” said the Prime Minister. These programmes include the Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP), an integrated programme meant to accelerate poverty eradication, rural growth, and social protection. VUP provides varied assistance to its beneficiaries, including wages as payment for public works; and direct support or safety net through provision of unconditional monthly cash transfers to the needy. The support also includes financial services which consist of loans charged at 2 per cent interest rate per year to help economically vulnerable people to run income-generating activities. Ngirente said that these interventions, among many others, yielded good result and the government will sustain them “because we saw people who were benefiting from VUP and got out of poverty.” He added the programme had enabled its beneficiaries to get access to affordable healthcare. “You realise that at over 60 per cent of Rwandans under the poverty line were able to get healthcare at health facilities,” he said. “We still want to go beyond 60 per cent, but that rate indicates that we've made good progress. No Rwandan should be unable to get healthcare.” The socioeconomic programmes, some of which aim at universal access to clean water and electricity, will continue under the second National Strategy for Transformation (NST2) that runs until 2029. The Prime Minister called on every Rwandan to contribute to the effective implementation of the five-year government strategy. “As all Rwandans, we should pull together so that every Rwandan is lifted out of poverty in a sustainable way,” Ngirente said. ALSO READ: Rwanda’s economy grew 8.9% in 2024 – Statistics body Rwanda’s GDP, he said, rose from more than Rwf7.6 trillion in 2017 to Rwf18.7 trillion in 2024, meaning that it more than doubled in the seven-year period. GDP per capita or average annual income per Rwandan increased by 30 per cent from $784 in 2017 to $1,029 (approx. Rwf1.4 million) in 2024. Parliamentarians commended the government for the progress made in tackling poverty.

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Ngirente: Govt to sustain social protection efforts to reduce poverty