VIETNAM:
Hit by Bird Flu, Farmers Pin Hope on Mobile Banking
Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
MY THO, Vietnam, May 6 (IPS) - ''No one feels very happy with the
government's allowance,'' said Tran Thi Muoi, a 45-year-old poultry farmer
at a hamlet near this city in the Mekong Delta. ''It's like a pinch of salt
thrown into the sea,'' she said of the amount her family got for killing
their chickens when the bird flu peaked months ago.
For Muoi's family, the 40 million Vietnamese dong (2,580 U.S. dollars)
it got from the government for killing their flock of chickens is nothing
compared to the nearly 600 million dong (38,700 dollars) in losses they
suffered when the avian flu struck more than two months ago.
Half of that loss includes loans that Muoi could not pay the bank and
debts the family owed to fodder companies.
On the day Muoi received the 2,580 dollar allowance, an agent from My
Tuong Fodder Comp came to collect half of it. Then, he asked Muoi to sign a
paper promising to pay off the remaining 80 million dong (5,610 dollars) in
debt two months later if she wants to continue doing business with his
company.
Muoi is but one of the farmers in the Mekong Delta still coping with
heavy debt burdens left by the bird flu, which struck some 10 Asian
countries from Thailand to China and led to massive culling of chickens
across the region.
According to the local offices of agriculture and rural development,
some 700 households in Tien Giang province, where My Tho is located, owe
banks and fodder companies more than 15 billion dong or 100,000 dollars. A
total of 4,865 households in Long An province owe them more than four times
this amount.
''If I could not pay off the 80 million dong (in debt), the company will
not let me buy the fodder needed for a new flock,'' Muoi explained in an
interview.
Desperate, she has put her hopes on mobile banking, a finance project
that has its workers traveling to remote rural areas and provides small
banking services to needy farmers like Muoi.
The use of a fleet of cars to carry out mobile banking of this sort was
first introduced on a large scale in Vietnam in 2000 and 2001. At the time,
159 vehicles were provided through a project funded by the World Bank and
carried out by the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
(VBARD) and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV).
Under the Rural Finance Project, a mobile banking car visits an average
of 62 remote locations a month. The journey leads to the creation of around
2,000 new savings accounts worth 19 billion dong (1.22 million dollars),
and nearly 2,000 new loans worth 15 billion dong (967,554 dollars). It also
collects more than 10 billion dong in loan payments per month.
From 1998 to 2001, nearly 650,000 loans were made to 250,000 households
throughout rural Vietnam through seven participating banks. Thirty percent
of the borrowers were women.
Most loans were small, averaging 5.4 million dong or 360 dollars, and
used to expand farm production such as crops, livestock and aquaculture,
agricultural processing, services and trading
''A country's banking system is like its blood system. For the country
to function at its peak and to include the poor and the disadvantaged,
basic banking services must reach out to the villages and hamlets, to the
farmers and small businesses in remote areas - they are the core of
Vietnam's society,'' Klaus Rohland, director of the World Bank in Vietnam
said in Hanoi.
Phung Khac Ke, deputy governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, said mobile
banking pumped more than 63 million dollars to more than 40,000 rural
families and businesses all around Vietnam in 2000.
Mobile banking has been a lifeline for Muoi herself in the past. From
2000 to 2001, she got a number of loans amounting to 100 million dong
(6,450 dollars) to develop her poultry farm.
In the first year, Muoi regularly paid back her loans, and thus was
entitled to more loans in the second year. But the bird flu destroyed her
business, and left Muoi penniless. ''I hope they would consider my good
record to let me have new loans to pay off the debts, and start my poultry
farm anew,'' Muoi explained.
There is reason for Muoi to hope. Following the success of the first
Rural Finance Project, a second project started on Mar. 30 this year.
This phase covers the use of some 240 mobile banking cars to bring
another 250 million dollars of investment into 90,000 small and
medium-sized rural businesses, 36 million dollars worth of micro-finance
loans to serve 75,000 farm households and 10,000 micro-enterprises.
Muoi's is one of the biggest poultry farms in Tien Giang province, and
thus could be considered for new loans to redevelop her business.
But Nguyen Thi Kim Thoa from Binh Phong hamlet nearby is not so hopeful.
She has never taken out loans from banks before, and is not sure whether
the mobile bankers would find her worth lending to or not.
Like many poor households in the remote countryside, Thoa's family has
nothing to advance as collateral to apply for banking loans. The land her
family lives on is owned by a local landlord, and her poultry facilities
are too small and obsolete to be used as mortgage.
For the loss borne by her small poultry farm, local authorities offered
Thoa a small allowance, but this did not last long. ''I have just received
13.5 million dong in allowances, then the fodder company came and took away
13 million,'' Thoa said.
With just 500,000 dong (32.25 dollars) left, Thoa can hardly buy fresh
chicks to develop another flock.
''Prices have risen threefold. A one-day-old chick is sold at 15,000
dong (nearly one dollar), and an egg-laying hen, twice that,'' Thoa sighed.
''If only could I get a micro-finance loan from these mobile banking
carsą.'' (END/2004)
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