Under the supervision report of the National Assembly of Vietnam, among three households escaped from poverty there is one household falling again into poverty. Many “newly escaped from poverty” households who are also vulerable but have not received much supports from the society so far, particularly financial support from financial institutions. They are not target groups of Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) and also have limited access to commercial banks. As a result, many easily fall back into poverty after natural disasters, crops loss, epidemic diseases, accident happennings etc,.

 

The Prime Minister of Vietnam thus has just assigned VBSP to provide credit to “newly escaped from poverty” households to help them develop production and business, stablize their life and escape from poverty sustainably. “Newly escaped from poverty” households are those who have just got out of the list of poor households for last three years  and currently have average income per head higher than the near-poor households as regulated by the Government. They  accordingly can access VBSP preferential loans for production and business with maximum loan size of VND 50 million (equivalent to over 2.000 USD) since 05 September 2015.

 

Four months after launching, the total outstanding loans of the program reached over VND 3,500 billion (equivalent to USD 156 million) with almost 107 thousand borrowers all over the country (as of 31 December 2015). It reveals a good prospect for a successful credit program in the long run.

 

In parallel, VBSP currently implements over 20 policy credit programs for the poor, near-poor, “newly escaped from poverty” househols and other policy beneficiaries. Over the last 13 years, there are nearly 27.7 million poor households and other policy beneficiaries to be provided preferential loans, which has helped 3.6 million households overcome poverty line and improved the standards of living for many vulneralbe groups in Vietnam. VBSP has become the whole-hearted fellow of the poor, near-poor, “newly escaped from poverty” households and other policy beneficiaries in Vietnam on the way to improve their economic and social status.