Total outstanding loans to ethnic people in Vietnam reached an estimated VND33 trillion ($1.46 billion) at the end of 2015, the Thoi Bao Kinh Te Viet Nam newspaper reported, citing Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP). The money, which was sourced from VBSP, one of the two government-run policy banks in the country, has helped more than 658,000 households escape poverty, create jobs to 56,000 people, send 6,000 people to work abroad, support 96,000 students and build 92,000 houses for the poor. The majority of the bank’s loans went to households of out-of-the-way places and poor households who seek to work abroad and those lack accommodations. Credit in social supporting programs, especially those from VBSP, has enabled poor people, ethnic people and people in remote areas improve their livelihood through household economic models. Of the social credit programs, lending to cattle breeding conducted by VBSP over the past years has supported hundreds of thousands of poor people, largely contributing to the country’s poverty reduction programs. Given an important role in reducing poverty in Vietnam, foreign organizations, especially the World Bank, have been significantly part of it. The World Bank’s President Jim Yong Kim said in a report last month that Vietnam has reduced extreme poverty from 50% about 25 years ago to just 3% today. (Thoi Bao Kinh Te Viet Nam –Vietnam Economic Times Mar 2 p3, Vietnamplus.vn Mar 1)
