Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Disbursements beneath micro-credit scheme PM SVANidhi for street vendors to recover from the Covid influence have jumped to 24.48 lakh loan applications involving Rs 2,426.47 crore as of August 29, 2021, from 20.65 lakh applications involving Rs 2,045 crore as of June 3, 2021, according to the official information. Launched on June 1, 2020, PM SVANidhi provides a working capital loan of up to Rs 10,000 for 12 months beneath the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative to Covid-hit street vendors like hawkers promoting fruits, vegetables, tea, footwear, regional snacks, books, and so on. Around 3.83 lakh applications involving Rs 381 crore disbursed throughout the almost 3-month period (June 3, 2021 — August 29, 2021) was larger in comparison to 1,36,850 loan applications involving Rs 136.36 crore disbursed till Sep 21, 2020 since its launch.
Overall, 45.11 lakh applications have been received throughout almost 15-month period (as of August 29, 2021), of which 26.98 lakh worth Rs 2,696.26 crore have been sanctioned when 6.61 lakh applications have been discovered ineligible and have been returned by companion banks, accessible information from Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs showed. 44 per cent applications disbursed belonged to fruits and vegetables vendors followed by 21 per cent to rapidly meals and meals products vendors, 14 per cent to vendors in cloth and handloom products, 5 per cent to vendors in beauty and style accessories, and so on.
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The scheme had targeted disbursement of 30 lakh applications throughout its 1st year on the other hand due to Covid disruption in April and May this year, it fell brief of the target. “30 lakh was very ambitious target. However, we should have achieved that target or reached close to it in April and May but due to the second Covid wave, not even a single loan was disbursed. Moreover, while the scheme was launched on June 1, the processing of applications had started on July 2. So, three months went in vain,” Sanjay Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had told TheSpuzz Online.
Importantly, the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday had extended the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) Scheme, which was announced by the central Bank in January this year to encourage deployment of Points of Sale (PoS) infrastructure in tier-3 to tier-6 centres and north eastern states, to street vendors covered beneath the SVANidhi scheme in tier-1 and tier-2 centres. The choice “will provide fillip to the Reserve Bank’s efforts towards promoting digital transactions at the grass root level,” a statement by RBI had stated. PIDF aims at generating 30 lakh new touch points just about every year for digital payments and would be operational for 3 years in the starting. The scheme has a corpus of Rs 345 crore (Rs 250 crore contributed by RBI and Rs 95 crore by the big authorised card networks in the nation).