Hanoi (VNA) - Over the lastfive years, more than 2.1 million households have sustainably escaped frompoverty thanks to social policy credit, which is said to be an important pillarof the national target programme for sustainable poverty reduction.

The figure was unveiled at a nationalteleconference on July 15 that reviewed the five-year implementation ofDirective No 40-CT/TW on enhancing the Party’s leadership over social policycredit, issued by the 11th-tenure Party Central Committee’s Secretariat onNovember 22, 2014.

A report at the event noted that thanks tosocial policy credit, the household poverty rate was brought down from 14.2percent in 2011 to 4.25 percent in 2015. Under the multidimensional povertymeasurement approach, the rate fell to 5.23 percent in 2018 from 9.88 percentin 2015.

Duong Quyet Thang, General Director of theVietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP), said that since the issuance of Directive40, awareness among all levels of authorities about the role of social policycredit has been improved, thus entrusting more resources from local budgets tothe VBSP to provide loans for low-income earners. As a result, credit has grownby 31.3 percent annually, or four times faster than in the pre-directiveperiod.

Nguyen Van Binh, head of the Party CentralCommittee’s Economic Commission, said the sound implementation of the socialpolicy credit programme has also helped with new-style rural area building andsustainable poverty reduction.

Notably, the proactive and timely provision ofsocial policy credit for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is consideredone of the particularly urgent and important solutions that helped the poor andpolicy beneficiaries find stable livelihoods.

This has helped enhance the people’s trust inthe Party and the State, achieve growth and development targets, eliminatepoverty quickly and sustainably, ensure social welfare, and guarantee politicalstability, security, and defence, Binh added.

Over the last five years, social policy credithas reached all commune-level localities nationwide. Credit has amounted to226.56 trillion VND (9.8 billion USD), rising more than 91 trillion VND since theend of 2014.

Loans worth some 336.94 trillion VND have beenprovided to more than 12 million households, over 2.1 million of which haveescaped from poverty sustainably.

Credit has also helped build more than 7.3million water supply and sanitary facilities in rural areas, along with nearly142,000 houses for the poor and policy beneficiaries nationwide./.