Credit incentives for poor households

The Social Policy Bank (SPB) of the northern province of Tuyên Quang is offering more preferential loans to producers, ethnic minority households, and disadvantaged students.

The bank is also pouring capital in communes with high poverty rate and giving loans to poor families in remote areas.

SPB has opened many workshops on credit, accounting, collecting debts, mobilizing savings, and procedures to establish savings groups. It has also shaken hand with the local authorities to found more transaction offices to finance poor households’ production activities.

So far, the Tuyên Quang SPB has granted VND 392 billion for over 65,000 households to cultivate rice, maize, groundnuts and soya beans, engage in raising cattle, and expand other sidelines.

The People’s Committee of the southern province of Sóc Trăng plans to allocate VND 64 billion in the 2009-2010 credit funds to help poor families in the province.

The province also encourages the development of effective models of production, such as growing clean vegetables and crops, raising shrimps and fresh water fish.

At least 73 models have been popularized, bringing about benefits to nearly 6,000 households.

Kon Tum, a Central Highlands province, is realizing a plan on funding poor ethnic minority households to grow rubber in the period of 2009-16. The total capital for the project is VND 210.5 billion.

Accordingly, 9,090 households will receive a half cut of the interest rate for loans from the provincial SPB for six years.

Each household is funded with VND 20 million to buy crop seedlings, input materials and fertilizers to serve the rubber cultivation.

Lam Chi