World Bank Funds $55.6M to Support Vietnam Low-income Earners until 2018

The World Bank has funded $55.6 million to improve the living standards of low-income earners in Vietnam in until 2018. The support will be made through soft loans in fields of oriental medicine, communications and telecommunications, agriculture and fisheries. Poverty rate accounts for roughly 8% of Vietnam’s total population, weakening its competitiveness and slowing the economic growth as the country needs to spend a large amount of money for poverty reduction. Vietnam said that it spent an estimated VND864 trillion ($41.14 billion) on fighting against poverty during 2005-2012. The programs over the years benefit 531,000 poor households, reducing the poverty rate to 7.8% in 2013 from 22% in 2005. But it is believed that a large amount of the annual spending has gone to feed the administration system instead. World Bank has pledged to fund the Southeast Asian country $1.5 billion for poverty fight in the next two to three years. (Thoi Bao Ngan Hang – Banking Times Oct 6 p6)