New Delhi [India], October 4 : PM SVANidhi scheme, which was launched to help street vendors and small businesses overcome challenges during the pandemic, achieved its target of reaching 50 lakh beneficiaries.
So far, as many as 65.75 lakh loans exceeding Rs 8,600 crore in disbursement took place, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme, is an initiative under the aegis of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
Street vendors play an integral role in the urban informal economy, providing essential goods and services to urban residents. The PM SVANidhi scheme has been instrumental in bringing them into the formal economic fold.
This resulted in the disbursement of a remarkable 65.75 lakh loans, benefiting over 50 lakh street vendors, with a total value exceeding Rs 8,600 crore.
"States have wholeheartedly embraced the scheme, with the recent campaign yielding impressive results. Over the past three months, states have successfully onboarded more than 12 lakh new vendors, the highest ever, with many more in the process of enrollment," MoHUA said in a release yesterday.
The Ministry has allocated targets to all states and union territories for the identification of beneficiaries and loan disbursement. States, in turn, have assigned targets to their respective cities, with the aim of achieving them by December 31, 2023.
Currently, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, and Gujarat are among the top-performing states, while Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Indore, and Mumbai are the leading cities in terms of implementation.
The scheme, launched on June 1, 2020, is a micro-credit scheme for urban street vendors that aims to provide collateral-free working capital loans up to Rs 50,000. Under the scheme regular repayments are incentivized with a 7 per cent interest subsidy and digital transactions are rewarded with cashback up to Rs 1,200 per year.
The scheme employs Aadhaar-based e-KYC, utilizes an end-to-end IT platform, and employs SMS-based notifications for application status updates.
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