At the beginning of 2005 the senior management of First Sino
Bank (FSB) actively answered the call of Shanghai government and participated in the national projects aiming to helping-the-poor. Under the support of the board of directors of FSB, we have chose Shanxi Province where
the needy people relatively gathered in the west part of China as an trial under the new poor-helping program in term I of the helping-the- poor project of FSB
Project Funds
In June 2005, $50,000 was allocated by FSB to Xunyi County, Shanxi Province. This amount of money was used under the management and supervision of Shanxi Poverty Alleviation and Development Office to assist needy families in developing
orchards and family farming projects. While the fund from the national government for helping-the-poor was used in the building of basic facilities such as water, electricity and roads and some other public-benefits events. These two kinds of funds worked together, which better the general effects of the project.
Project Targets
There are 275 villages in Xunyi County, locating on the loess plateau in the middle of Shanxi Province, with the population of 270,000, of which 95% are farmers. The number of needy people is 130,900 and villages belonging to helping-the-poor 149. The project targets are the farmers in Zhangba Temple Xindianzi village and Chi dao xiang yijin village of Xunyi County, Shanxi Province. The economy of Xunyi County is based on agriculture and apple orchards are the primary economic plants. Helping-the-poor funds from the national government have been used in the building of basic facilities in the county such as water, electricity and roads and the farmersˇ allowance. Most of the villagers are short of liquid capital in developing individual economy, especially
lacking for the money for purchasing pesticide and fruit packages. Under such circumstances, the money of the project from FSB timely reached local villagers.
Principles of using the capital
The money was used and managed under the principle of ˉ Use with interest, continuous developmentˇ, proposed by FSB. Shanxi Poverty Alleviation and Development Office chose the local families and offered technical training and management. Each family was allocated RMB1,000~3,000 of cash loans to develop production. With this amount of money, villagers bought packages used for planting non-pollution apples, or chickens, cows and sheep, and they increased their revenue in one farming cycle by 50~100% with the implementation of advanced farming technology, that is to say, they could pay back their micro-loans within one farming cycle. The operation model of giving the method rather than the result not only helped the villagers
establish the rural economy with sustainable development and accelerate their pace of getting rid of poverty, but to some extent maintain their self-esteem and enable them to rely on their own efforts as well.
Achievements of the project
The term⒐of the project came to an end on Nov. 20th 2005, with the FSBˇs capital staying in the village helping reproduction. Great effects have been made in term⒐of the project. With new technology, the price of apples increased from RMB0.9/500g to RMB1.7/500g, so the income doubled under the same situation. Breeding one more chicken, the revenue would increase RMB35
one more pig, RMB600, one more milk goat, RMB700 and one more cow RMB1500. With developing rural industry, the income of the family with loans would be several times higher than before, using such method of calculation.
In the project, the purchasement were 1,500kgs of pesticide, 65.3tons of chemical fertilizer and 1,148,000 of fruit lightproof packages for the local orchard development. The increase also
included 40 cows, 308 pigs 95 sheep and 12,000 chickens. Ten families with methane are newly built and the environment has been improved. According to the analysis of the progress and benefits of the project, we can see that the revenue of the two villages of the project has increased by RMB390,000 this year, of which RMB200,000 for apples and RMB190,000 for aquiculture. It is estimated that by the end of the project next year the increase of the villagers revenue will have reached RMB780,000nearly RMB3,000 per family, and the revenue increase per person will be more than RMB700, this means 261 families in the two villages will get rid of poverty. By the end of Oct., some villagers had returned the loan of helping-the-poor and the money paid back had amounted to RMB53,000, which ensured the continuing development of the project.
The success of the project term⒐ enabled the project targets to develop themselves. In the process of taking part in the project, the villagers improved their skills, became more confident and got the idea of self-sustaining .
Supervision
The senior management of FSB has paid much attention to this project. In spring of 2005, Mr. Zhoudirector of FSB, led the team to Xunyi County, Shanxi Province, investigating, choosing targets of the project and personally making suggestions for setting principles of helping-the-poor in Shanxi Province. At the beginning of Nov. 2005, President Jiang Tian Xi went to Zhangba
Temple Xindianzi village and Chi dao xiang yijin village of Xunyi County, Shanxi Province, checking and evaluating the project in local families, summarizing the results of the project and consenting that this activity would be continued.
The following development
In Mar. 2006, President Jiang, together with the General managers of FSB sub-branches, signed the agreement of intention of the project term ⒑ with Shanxi Poverty Alleviation and Development Office. FSB project term⒐ has made great success and the preparation of term ⒑ has been done.The project term⒐ started from solving how to increase the revenue. The money from the project for helping-the-poor was used to establish the farmersˇ production development fund and it was used with interest. After catching the weaknesses, it solved the problem of production investment and supported production development. Consequently, farmersˇ revenue increased. Foreign-investment Project Management Centre,
Alleviation and Development Office has planned to generalize such experience and model in the 1000 villages of the ˉHelping-the-poor Project of the World Bank, Term⒔ˇ and share the experience in the development of other villages.
With the continuing implementation of the FSB project term⒑,
more needy people are expected to be richer and it is certain that more experience of helping-the-poor will be gained. We will make great contribution to decrease and eliminate the number of the needy people in Shanxi Province.
