Lý Say Kín, an ethnic person in Bù Gia Mập District’s Phước Minh Commune in Bình Phước Province, feeds her goats. She was the beneficiary of a soft loan for raising goats under the province’s programmes for supporting ethnic people. – VNA/VNS Photo K GỬIH

BÌNH PHƯỚC – Bình Phước Province has earmarked VNĐ120.6 billion (US$5.1 million) this year for an annual programme to help 1,000 poor ethnic households escape poverty.

It will be used to build houses and toilets for them, supply water and electricity for those living in remote areas, create livelihoods, provide soft loans to carry on small businesses, breed livestock, and buy agricultural production tools like grass cutting and sawing machines and sprayers.

The south-eastern province has 40 ethnic groups with 198,884 people, accounting for 19.7 per cent of its population.

It began implementing the annual programme in 2019, and has helped more than 5,000 ethnic households escape poverty since.

It seeks to double the 2020 per capita income of ethnic people within the next two years, provide all of them access to power and 99 per cent of them with safe water.

It also implements a national programme for socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

It has provided many ethnic households with soft loans for doing farming or business.

Trương Thanh Chung, a poor ethnic person living in Sóc Nê Hamlet in Bù Đốp District’s Tân Tiến Commune, received a soft loan worth VNĐ100 million ($4,300) to buy cows for breeding calves.

His family bought four cows and built a cattle shed, he said.

“My family is tending the cows carefully so that they are able to reproduce soon and my family’s economy will be better.”

Under the programme, ethnic people can borrow up to VNĐ100 million for 10 years.

Hoàng Văn Thọ, head of Sóc Nê Hamlet’s savings and loan group, said all borrowers had used the loans for the purpose agreed to.

The group regularly checks and reminds them to use the loans properly, according to Thọ.

The province’s socio-political organisations such as the Women’s Union help their members with livelihoods to escape poverty.

The Bù Gia Mập District Women’s Union, for instance, helps its members breed livestock and grow fruits and other crops.

Thị Dên, an ethnic person in Đa Kia Commune, lacked money to do farming and worked as a daily labourer. The union helped her get a soft loan of VNĐ50 million ($2,100) from Việt Nam Bank for Social Policy to raise pigs, chicken and ducks and grow vegetables in 2021.

She now earns VNĐ200 million ($8,500) a year and has escaped poverty.

“My family’s income has increased and our life has stabilised," she said – VNS