PHÒNG CHỐNG BÃO ! – Prevent storm damage – Prévention des catastrophes naturelles

The workshop had two aims: to explore ways that poor families can be encouraged to take out loans to help them in achieving a flood and typhoon resistant house; and to explore with existing and potential lending institutions ways that sustainable and affordable loans for preventive house strengthening can be offered to poor families
On the 7^th March 2008 Development Workshop France (DWF) organised a round table workshop in Hué, Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam. 

At present poor families can borrow up to 3 million Dongs with no collateral from the Vietnam Bank for Social Policy, but this amount does not match the costs of either strengthening an existing house, not the greater cost of building a new flood and storm resistant house.
The workshop drew on the experience of DWF over the past eight years of helping poor families in central Vietnam to strengthen their existing homes and to make sure that new homes are build to a standard that will make sure they can resistant storms and floods. The workshop has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO). ECHO has supported DWF in Vietnam since 2003.

The participants included representatives from the Vietnam Bank for Social Policy, the Vietnam Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Women’s Union, Mekong Economics Ltd, the Ford Foundation, NDM-P, DMC, the World Bank/MARD Natural Disaster Risk Management Project, GRET, CECI, World Concern, Oxfam, Plan, NAV, the People’s Committee of Thua Thien Hué Province and of ten DWF partner communes in the province, and the provincial departments of Flood and Storm Control, Construction, International Relations.

The workshop participants heard about the formal and informal sources of borrowing that families currently turn to in order to strengthen their homes, and about the formal sector options that provide by Vietnamese banks and lending institutions. Participants discussed the barriers families face and potential incentives that could be developed to encourage preventive strengthening. And with the very active participation of the Vietnamese Bank for Social Policy, the workshop examined the steps that need to be taken to develop a new Safe House loan product that is adapted to the capacity and needs of poor borrowers. This is in line with recent statements from the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control and by ex Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet on the need for loans to help families build and achieve safe houses.

The conclusion is that there is an urgent need to develop a safe house loan product that is attractive and affordable to poor families in Central Vietnam, similar to the Mekong River Delta housing loans, and the participants agreed to work over the next two years to achieve this. At the same time, more immediate steps will be taken to raise awareness of the medium term advantages of borrowing to obtain a safer house compared to the costs of repeated repairs and reconstruction that follow floods and typhoons.

(Development Workshop France (DWF))