The imbalance in sex ratio at birth in Vietnam has fallen for the first time this year after continuously increasing for the past several years, a survey has said.

>> Vietnam launches Month of Action on Population towards sustainable development Nguyen Van Tan, deputy head of the General Department of Population and Family Planning, released the information at a press conference held in Hanoi on Monday. According to the results of a survey conducted recently, the sex ratio at birth in Vietnam is 112.4 boys to 100 girls, a reduction from the ratio of 113.8 to 100 in 2013, Tan said. This is an initial outcome of efforts to reduce the sex imbalance at birth in recent years, the official said, adding that more action is needed to reach a sustainable reduction in sex imbalance in the future.

Vietnam has had a sex imbalance at birth since 2006 and the situation worsened year after year since then, Duong Quoc Trong, head of the department, which is under the Ministry of Health, said earlier. In 2009, Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth was 110.6/100, which increased to 111.2/100 in 2010, 111.9/100 in 2011, and 112.3/100 in 2012. In 2013, the ratio was recorded at 113.8/100 before climbing to 114/100 in the Jan-Jun period of this year, a rate which had been forecast for 2018, Trong said. This discrepancy will likely leave two to four million men of marriageable age unable to find wives by 2050, he warned. At a press conference last year, the Ministry of Health said that Vietnam needs about VND3 trillion (US$141.6 million) to invest in projects aimed at easing sex imbalance at birth by 2020. Regarding the country’s population, Nguyen Thi Xuan Mai, head of the Population Statistics Office under the General Department of Statistics, said at a meeting on Wednesday that Vietnam had 90.49 million as of the end of April. On average, the population has increased by 930,000 people per year over the past five years, Mai said.  Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Thanh Hoa are the three most populous regions in Vietnam, with respective populations of 7.95 million, 7.06 million and 3.49 million, the official said.

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