WB provides VN USD 200 million credit to develop rural economy
Washington, June 1 (VNA) -- The World Bank (WB) on May 30 approved a USD 200 million credit for viet Nam to develop its rural economy.
The funds are part of the second Rural Finance Project which aims to help Viet Nam develop its rural economy and improve living conditions in rural areas by giving farm households and private rural entrepreneurs money to invest in developing their businesses. The project is also designed to strengthen the banking system's capacity to better serve the rural economy and to increase access of the rural poor to financial services.
It will assist enterprises and individuals in the private sector, particularly farm households and rural entrepreneurs, helping them to implement their expansion and modernisation plans, to undertake new sub-projects, and to finance working capital requirements. The project will finance eligible sub-projects all over Viet Nam, except in the urban areas of Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, northern Hai Phong and central Da Nang cities.
About 175,000 enterprises and households will benefit as a result of this project. Of this number, 90,000 small and medium enterprises, including farm households, along with 75,000 households and 10,000 micro-enterprises will have access to formal financial services, according to World Bank task manager for the project Arie Chupak.
This project follows the first Rural Finance Project which closed at the end of 2001 and benefited almost a quarter of a million households.
From 1998 to 2001, nearly 650,000 loans were made to 250,000 households throughout rural Viet Nam through seven participating banks. Thirty percent of borrowers were women. Most loans were small, averaging VND 5.4 million (equal to USD 360) and applied to expand farm production such as crops, livestock and aquaculture, agricultural processing, services and trading.--Enditem
