The family of Nguyen Van Dinh in Long Chau commune, Yen Phong district is among households accessing capital from the fund and successfully improve their economic production.
Already having land and labourers, but Dinh’s family did not have capital for production. In 2019, after receiving a loan of 100 million VND (4,273 USD) from the fund, the family invested in raising ducks and goats as well as fish.
Currently, each year, Dinh’s family sells 10,000 ducks and 300 goats, earning billions of VND.
Dinh said that although the loan was not too big, it was of great help to his family at that time, enabling him to buy equipment for his duck and goat farm. So far, Dinh has paid off the loan and contributed to the fund with a hope to help other farmers gain access to capital for expanding their production, thus escaping from poverty.
A safe vegetable cooperative in Lien Ap hamlet, Viet Doan commune of Tien Du district is also a successful model in making effective use of the capital provided by the Bac Ninh Fund for Farmer Support.
Director of the cooperative Nguyen Van Hiep said that the cooperative was established in 2018 with 134 member households and a total nearly 40 hectares of farming land. At that time, most members of the cooperative lived on vegetable farming and did not have capital for expanding production.
Thanks to the help of the provincial Farmers' Union, the cooperative received a loan of over 1 billion VND (42,730 USD) from the Fund for Farmer Support, which it used to purchase equipment and machinery to expand VietGAP vegetable growing and livestock raising activities. At present, the cooperative's revenues from safe agricultural production hit 6-7 billion VND (about 300,000 USD) per year.
Tran Dang Sam, President of the provincial Farmers’ Union affirmed that the Fund for Farmer Support has made great contributions to promoting household economic development, minimising usury in rural areas.
Sam said that as of the end of June 2022, more than 1,600 households had borrowed money from the fund, with a total value of more than 112 billion VND (4.78 million USD).
The capital has been used effectively, helping develop many economic models with high economic efficiency.
In order to bring the fund closer to local farmers, in the time to come, the Bac Ninh Farmers’ Union will popularise support policies for farmers, while choosing feasible projects to receive loans from the fund.
With an aim to further enhance the efficiency of the fund, last year, the People’s Committee of Bac Ninh approved a project to renovate, improve the effectiveness and promote the development of the fund in the 2021-2030 period.
The project aims to increase farmers’ access to soft loans from the fund to develop household economic activities and strengthen the application of science and technology into their production, contributing to the implementation of the new-style rural area building programme.
Under the project, in the 2021-2025 period, Bac Ninh will ensure that the provincial budget will allocate at least 10 billion VND (427,304 USD) to the fund per year, and at least 15 billion VND (640,998 USD) per year in the 2026-2030 period.
The fund will provide loans in short and middle terms. Short-term loans have a maturity of up to 12 months, while middle-term loans will have a maturity from over 12 months to 36 months. A household can borrow up to 100 million VND (4,273 million VND) at maximum, while a projects involving a group of household can borrow up to 2 billion VND (85,466 USD).
