Over the last five years, more than 2.1 million households have sustainably escaped from poverty thanks to social policy credit, which is said to be an important pillar of the national target programme for sustainable poverty reduction.

The figure was unveiled at a national teleconference on July 15 that reviewed the five-year implementation of Directive No 40-CT/TW on enhancing the Party’s leadership over social policy credit, issued by the 11th-tenure Party Central Committee’s Secretariat on November 22, 2014.

A report at the event noted that thanks to social policy credit, the household poverty rate was brought down from 14.2% in 2011 to 4.25% in 2015. Under the multidimensional poverty measurement approach, the rate fell to 5.23% in 2018 from 9.88% in 2015.

Duong Quyet Thang, General Director of the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP), said that since the issuance of Directive 40, awareness among all levels of authorities about the role of social policy credit has been improved, thus entrusting more resources from local budgets to the VBSP to provide loans for low-income earners. As a result, credit has grown by 31.3% annually, or four times faster than in the pre-directive period.

Nguyen Van Binh, head of the Party Central Committee’s Economic Commission, said the sound implementation of the social policy credit programme has also helped with new-style rural area building and sustainable poverty reduction.

Notably, the proactive and timely provision of social policy credit for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is considered one of the particularly urgent and important solutions that helped the poor and policy beneficiaries find stable livelihoods.

This has helped enhance the people’s trust in the Party and the State, achieve growth and development targets, eliminate poverty quickly and sustainably, ensure social welfare, and guarantee political stability, security, and defence, Binh added.

Over the last five years, social policy credit has reached all commune-level localities nationwide. Credit has amounted to VND226.56 trillion (US$9.8 billion), rising more than VND91 trillion  since the end of 2014.

Loans worth some VND336.94 trillion have been provided to more than 12 million households, over 2.1 million of which have escaped from poverty sustainably.

Credit has also helped build more than 7.3 million water supply and sanitary facilities in rural areas, along with nearly 142,000 houses for the poor and policy beneficiaries nationwide.