Soft loans help Toan Son commune’s farmers escape poverty

10/17/2017 - 10:49:17 AM

(HBO) – As an agriculture-based commune, Toan Son (Da Bac district) has no part-time jobs so local residents has faced difficulties in their livelihoods. As part of efforts to help poor and near-poor households get access to soft loans to develop production, the board for hunger alleviation and poverty reduction has joined hands with the local Bank for Social Policies to mobilise and use the capital effectively. Thanks to the preferential loans, hundreds of ethnic groups are able to develop production and farming to sustainably escape poverty.

Photo: The soft loan provided by the Bank for Social Policies helps Ly Trung Binh’s household in Ranh hamlet, Toan Son commune develop production and stabilize the life.

Earlier, the family of Duong Thi Quyet and Ly Trung Binh in Ranh hamlet, Toan Son commune, was a poor household and they did not have sufficient capital for production development. Poverty clung to the family like a leech when all five members relied on a sugarcane field and a small grove of arrowroots. The family once lived in a low-roofed cottage. The couple then decided to borrow 30 million VND in 2013 to plant wattle and purchase two cows. They bought materials and fertilisers to take care of the sugarcane field and arrowroot grove. In 2016, the family was enabled to borrow an additional 25 million VND from a housing programme. Together with support from relatives, they built a 100 square metrehouse with a total cost of 120 million VND.

Binh said "My family is grateful to the Bank for Social Policies for the loans. When settling down to married life, we faced a series of difficulties. Thanks to the preferential loans, we gradually overcame challenges. In the next two years when we harvest the wattle forest, we will pay the bank debts and escape poverty sustainably”.

Trieu Thi Thuy, an official of the board for hunger alleviation and poverty reduction, said that Toan Son commune is currently home to over 600 households with 2,439 people, 50 percent of them are Dao ethnic minorities. The commune’s nine saving and lending groups have implemented 11 preferential credit programmes for over 400 households with total outstanding debts of 15 billion VND. The loans have been used to expand production, build houses and construct waterworks.

Soft loans, agricultural encouragement activities, training workshops and science and technology transfer have helped hundreds of households in the commune get rid of poverty. To date, the poverty and near-poor rates in the commune drop to 48 percent and 20 percent, respectively, with per capita income reaches 21 million VND./.

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