Truong Thi Le, a 54-year-old woman from Thuan Nam district in Ninh Thuan province, is one of the typical examples benefiting from the policy credit. In 2024, Le is living in a spacious house and earning a stable income while her children are all employed, thanks to the support of VBSP.

Recalling her past, Le could not hide her feelings when raising four small children alone. Life was hard back then, when she did not own a house and could not make enough money to feed her children.

“Without the support from local authorities, the Commune Farmers' Association, and the VBSP branch in the district, I would have had no opportunities to escape poverty,” she said.

In 2009, Le’s family obtained VND20 million ($785) from the local VBSP branch for pig farming. Thanks to the favourable pig farming situation, she was able to pay debts to the bank. After renovating the barns, she continued to secure VBSP’s loans to make further investments.

When her children gained admission to universities, she was introduced to VBSP’s lending policy for disadvantaged students. As a result, four of her children could secure loans to pursue education and go overseas for labour exports. VBSP disbursed a loan of VND100 million ($3,900) for her children to work overseas.

In 2018, her family officially escaped poverty and paid off all debts at the bank.

“No matter how poor we are, we should strive to rise up because there is always support and sharing with the needy like us. Let’s believe that every effort will pay off, and someday we will reap the fruits,” Le said.

Achievements like these indicate that policy credit has been designed to form a synchronous policy system, provide diverse support, and address the essential problems in the lives of the poor, according to VBSP. Policy credit also helps wipe out black credit, contributing to socioeconomic development in the country.

At the same time, it can also create drastic transformation in poor, mountainous, and ethnic minority regions, narrowing the gap between regions in the country

By accessing the government’s preferential capital sources, the poor and policy beneficiaries can focus on business and production activities, creating livelihood and employment, and getting familiar with financial banking services. These people take steps to improve the level of production, business, and capital management, enhance income, escape poverty, VBSP believes. As a result, the material and spiritual lives of the poor and policy beneficiaries are constantly improved, helping them gain more confidence and gradually increase their position in society.

Over the past 22 years, policy credit has helped over 6.7 million households escape poverty and created jobs for seven million people, of which 153,000 working abroad. VBSP has also supported 3.9 million students to access loans to pursue education and buy 90,000 PCs and online learning equipment.

In addition, VBSP has built over 19 million rural clean water and environmental sanitation projects, constructed more than 730,000 houses for the poor and other policy beneficiaries, and provided capital for the purchase or lease of more than 47,000 social houses.

Nearly 2,000 businesses and employers affected by the recent pandemic also borrowed capital to pay work stoppage wages and restore production for more than 1.2 million workers.