The People’s Committee of Soc Trang province has adopted several measures to reduce poverty this year, including developing rural agriculture, creating more jobs and support policies for poor people. The Mekong Delta province hopes to reduce its poverty rate to less than 3% by the end of this year from 4.91% at the end of last year, according to the People’s Committee. The province plans to expand efficient farming models to increase the value of production. The models include intercropping and rotating between crops, rotating between rice and other crops on rice fields to adapt to climate change and breeding cows and oxen. The province will solicit investment to create jobs, improve incomes and reduce the numbers of people going to work in other cities and provinces. It will focus on creating jobs in rural areas and for fresh graduates and improving the quality of vocational training. It targets creating 30,000 jobs this year. Last year it created 31,070 jobs, or 19.5% higher than the target, and provided vocational skills for 13,268 people. The People’s Committee also plans to strengthen support policies for poor and ethnic people this year, including providing soft loans for them for farming and doing business. Soc Trang has a large number of ethnic people, with the Khmer accounting for 30.7% of its population and the Hoa (Vietnamese of Chinese origin) for 5%. Soft loans given to poor households for agriculture and doing business in recent years has created jobs and better livelihoods for them. Phan Thi Ly, a member of the Ward 3 Women’s Union in Nga Nam town, said she received loans to do agriculture and has managed to climb out of poverty. She got two soft loans of VND30 million ($1,290) each to grow pineapple and jackfruit and to breed fish, ducks and chicken, she said. Truong Thi Lieu, chairwoman of the union, said if any member of the union wants to do agriculture or business, the union would help them borrow from the Bank for Social Policies. Last year 26 members of the union escaped poverty by borrowing soft loans for agriculture or business, she said. “The lives of the union’s members have improved significantly.” The Bank for Social Policies’s Soc Trang branch provided soft loans to more than 189,000 poor households and people covered by the Government’s preferential policies in 2014-19. Duong Dinh Lang, director of Soc Trang branch, said the loans have helped more than 50,000 poor households escape poverty and enabled more than 5,600 poor students to go to school. Many efficient farming and business models have been developed by using the loans to breed pigs, buffalos, fish, and chicken, grow fruits and make handicrafts, he said. (Vietnam Plus)
