Hanoi (VNA) – Policy credit has offered chance🐽s for the poor and policy beneficiaries to raise their income and improve living quality.

The Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) has made strides in policy credit with a target of leaving no one behind, fostering Vietnam’s sustainable development.

When policy listens to people’s inner voice

Reviewing the implementation of policy credit activities under the national target programme on poverty reduction in the 2016-2020 period, General Director of the VBSP Duong Quyet Thang said social policy credit has helped more poor people and policy beneficiaries have chances to raise their income and improve living quality. Notably, the Party Central Committee issued Instruction No.40-CT/TW dated November 22, 2014, on the strengthening of Party leadership over social policy credit; and the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 401/QD-TTg on March 14, 2016, on the implementation of the instruction. Capital entrusted in localities surged by 10.71 trillion VND in five years to 14.51 trillion VND (630.4 million USD). Since 2015, the Government has issued new social policy credit programmes to meet practical and urgent demands of the people, such as providing loans to households which just escape from poverty, and to people who need jobs and work overseas, among others. The Board of Directors of the VBSP decided to raise the maximum loan to 100 million VND for borrowers without asking for collateral, and to 120 million VND for the poor people. The decision has met the demand for capital of local people’s production and business.

When policy is built from life

A cooperative producing clean tea products in Long Coc commune of Tan Son district in the northern province of Phu Tho is managed by Pham Thi Hanh and her husband Ha Van Tham. Their tea is a famous specialty of the province which is sold in the supermarket chains of Phu Cuong and Vinmart. However, most people do not know that the cooperative was built from the support of social policy credit. The couple said it was social policy credit that has lifted their lives up. With the first loans to poor households worth between 3 and 5 million VND to support their pig farming, they just hoped to make ends meet. 2012 marked a breakthrough as the family asked for loans to cultivate a tea garden under the GAP standard. And three years later, the tea garden of 2.5 ha began to generate stable income for the family. Hanh and other women in her village then set up a group to produce clean tea products under the VietGap standard. She registered the Long Coc tea brand this year and turned the group into a cooperative. Additionally, she borrowed 50 million VND to raise productivity and quality of the tea and purchase new equipment.    The cooperative’s membership has increased to 40, while the area under tea has been expanded to 80 ha. A project is being completed to construct a factory processing high-quality tea products for domestic and foreign markets, particularly Russia.

Enormous resources needed to maximize policies

There are still 6.6 million poor people and policy beneficiaries nationwide, with unpaid debts in social policy credit programmes hitting 199.82 trillion VND as of August 31, up 57.3 billion VND, or 40.2 percent compared to December 2015. To better the implementation of the social policy credit programme, the VBSP has asked relevant agencies to distribute resources effectively. The VBSP has also asked for permission to extend the limit of government bond to meet the development rate assigned by the Prime Minister. The bank requested the Government to submit to the National Assembly to earmark part of the State budget for a master investment project on the socio-economic development in mountainous, disadvantaged and ethnic-inhabited regions./.