Government unveils PM SVANIDHI scheme to provide affordable loans to street vendors

Union Government has launched PM SVANIDHI - Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi - a special micro-credit facility scheme for providing affordable loan to street vendors. The scheme is aimed at enabling the street vendors to resume their livelihoods that have been adversely affected due to COVID-19 lockdown.

Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry launched the scheme in pursuance of the announcement made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month. Street vendors play significant role in ensuring availability of the goods and services at affordable rates at the door-step of the city dwellers.

The scheme targets to benefit over 50 lakh street vendors, who had been vending on or before 24th March this year, in urban areas. The duration of the scheme is till March 2022. The street vendors belonging to the surrounding peri-urban or rural areas are being included as beneficiaries under the urban livelihoods programme for the first time.

The vendors can avail a working capital loan of upto ten thousand rupees, which is repayable in monthly instalments in the tenure of one year. On timely and early repayment of the loan, an interest subsidy at the rate of seven per cent per annum will be credited to the bank accounts of beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer on six monthly basis.

The Ministry said, if the vendor will repays the instalments in time or earlier, they will develop his credible credit score that makes him eligible for higher amount of term loan to 20 thousand rupees and so on. Urban Local Bodies will play pivotal role in the implementation of the scheme. The lending institutions under the Scheme include Scheduled Commercial Banks, Regional Rural Banks, Small Finance Banks, Cooperative Banks, NBFCs, Micro Finance institutions and Self Help Group banks.

In order to ensure fast implementation of the scheme with transparency, a digital platform with web portal and mobile app is being developed to administer the scheme with end-to-end solution. The IT platform will also help in integrating the vendors into the formal financial system. (AIR)

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