Mr. Nguyen Duc Lenh, Deputy Director of the State Bank of Vietnam – HCMC Branch, said that the poverty reduction loan program had been implemented by HCMC's poverty reduction committees at all levels since 1994. By 2015, the Fund for Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction was handed over to the HCMC Bank for Social Policies for management and implementation, with the total outstanding balance at the time of handover reaching VND213 billion.
After six years of receiving the fund, the total loan turnover from the Poverty Alleviation Loan Program at the Ho Chi Minh City Bank for Social Policies reached approximately VND2.94 trillion, with 98,650 turns of poor households, near-poor households, and households that have just escaped the near-poor household standard in the area being granted loans.
Currently, the program's outstanding loans reached roughly VND1.34 trillion, 6.3 times higher than that in 2015 and accounting for 17.8 percent of the total outstanding loans of the HCMC Bank for Social Policies. The loan overdue is low, accounting for about 0.5 percent of the total outstanding loans of the program, showing that the lending program is quite effective.
