At the conference

Social policy credit has lifted more than 2 million ethnic minority households out of poverty as of August 31, said Director General of the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) Duong Quyet Thang at a conference in Hanoi on September 25.

It has also created jobs for more than 162,000 ethnic minority workers, including some 16,000 people working abroad on fixed-term contracts, and funded the construction of 215,000 houses for those from difficult backgrounds, Thang told the conference to review the effectiveness of social policy credit for ethnic minorities in Vietnam, held by the VBSP and the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs.

About 211,000 disadvantaged ethnic minority students have been offered student loans to pursue further education, he added.

More than 1.4 million borrowers from the VBSP were ethnic minority people who have taken out approximately 136 trillion VND (5.84 billion USD) in soft loans, and outstanding balance for ethnic minority people at the bank exceeds 49.6 trillion VND, accounting for 24.8 percent of the total outstanding balance, the director general said.

Social policy credit has changed their way of thinking, allowing many ethnic minority people to overcome their inferiority complex to apply for a loan, and successfully develop their own business. The preferential credit has also helped hampered loan sharks, he said.

Soft credit is one of the 54 exclusive policies designed for ethnic minority groups and a bright spot in sustainable poverty reduction, said Truong Thi Mai, head of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Mass Mobilisation. Disadvantaged ethnic minority people have become more independent with greater responsibility for their livelihood rather than relying on others’ support, according to Mai.

Such a change in thinking has heightened their chances of sustainably escaping poverty, she said.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Vietnam’s poverty rate declined from 14.75 percent to 4.25 percent from 2007 – 2015 and from 8.23 percent to 5.35 percent from 2016 – 2018 .

Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Le Minh Hung said the central bank has submitted to the Government a finance proposal which outlines solutions to provide easier access to capital and financial services for poor and vulnerable people in remote areas. The solutions include the application of new technologies at a low cost to better serve people in these disadvantaged areas, he said./.