Vietnam Women's Union and its loan service for poor women entrusted by the Social Policy Bank
VWU has raised and promoted the tradition of mutual assistance, tapped resources from women's strengths, mobilized the solidarity spirit among women all over the country to surpass difficulties. Especially, since 2003, VWU signed with the Social Policy Bank (SPB) to entrust loan to poor women for business and production development aimed at poverty reduction. This bears great significance, creating a mechanism of collaboration for the objective which has political and social meaning and profound humanity, at the same time making opportunity for industrious but poor women to quickly escape from poverty and improve their living standard. With great efforts and close collaboration between VWU and the SPB, the entrusting service has obtained heartening achievements despite short duration of implementation.
Up to September 2005, VWU in 64 provinces/cities have been entrusted to give loans to poor households by SPB. 93,401 saving women groups have been established, 1,462,890 poor women have been provided with loans with the outstanding loans of nearly 6,000 billion VND, accounting for approximately 50% of the total outstanding loans of the SPB. In general, all 64 provincial/cities Women's Union have effectively conducted their entrusting service, among them, 25 provincial/cities Women's Union have outstanding loans of over 100 billion VND, particularly Thanh Hoa province has 252 billion VND and Nghe An province 217 billion VND. There are 11 provinces/cities having outstanding loans of from 80 to below 100 billion VND. The lowest one is 21 billion VND. Women, with high self-respect, strictly follow the Bank's regulations, honestly and timely pay full loans and interests to the Bank. The repayment rate is approximately 98%, especially that of Hung Yen province is 100%. 14 provinces have the rate of over-due loan of below 0.5%. Thanh Hoa and Nghe An province have low rate of over-due loan which is 0.16% and 0.56% respectively. Some other provinces have inconsiderable rate of over-due loans at 0.01% as Binh Duong and Hai Duong.
In the coming time, to have better results, VWU and SPB need to further their collaboration and enlarge spheres of providing loans, in particularly far and remote areas. According to statistics, the outstanding loans in some provinces, which have high rate of poverty, is still low, whereas in some other provinces the rate of over-due payment is rather high. VWU and SPB should recommend the Government to guide Ministries/branches including the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to provide job training and agricultural extension programs for poor women to supply them with loans, and help them to use loans effectively so that they can eliminate poverty and repay loans and interests.
