Govt launches scheme to provide loan facility to street vendors

NEW DELHI: In order to provide loan facility to street vendors, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MOHUA) on Friday launched a scheme of special micro-credit facility for street vendors. The Ministry has already circulated the guidelines of the scheme to all stakeholders, states besides banks, MFIS, NBFCS, SIDBI and street vendors' associations to sensitize them about their role and responsibilities. The integrated IT platform for Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor's Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM Svanidhi) scheme is likely to be launched by the fourth week of June. In the first phase, 108 cities have been selected, in consultation with states/uts, for saturation by September this year.

According to the report, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between MOHUA and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), in order to engage SIDBI as the Implementation Agency for PM SVANIdhi. The MOU was signed by Sanjay Kumar, Joint Secretary on behalf of MOHUA and V Satya Venkata Rao, Deputy Managing Director, SIDBI, in the presence of Hardeep S Puri, Minister of State, MOHUA. As per the terms, SIDBI will manage the credit guarantee to the lending institutions through credit guarantee fund trust for micro and small enterprises (CGTMSE). It will develop and maintain a customised and integrated IT platform providing end-toend solutions, including documentation of all the processes and workflows for an end-toend solution, through a portal and a mobile app, to ensure engagement and information flow between urban local bodies (ULBS), lending Institutions, digital payment aggregators and other stakeholders. It will leverage the network of lending Institutions like scheduled commercial banks (SCBS), non-bank finance companies (NBFCS), micro finance institutions (MFIS), co-operative banks, small finance banks (SFBS) and regional rural ranks (RRBS) for the scheme implementation. SIDBI shall also provide a project management unit (PMU), comprising domain experts in training/ capacity building, project and platform management, information education and communication (IEC), banking, NBFC and MFI sectors for the period of PM Svanidhi.

The scheme was launched by the MOHUA on June 1 for providing affordable working capital loan to street vendors to resume their livelihoods that have been adversely affected due to COVID-19 lockdown. This scheme targets to benefit over 50 lakh street vendors. Under the Scheme, the vendors can avail a working capital loan of up to Rs 10,000, which is repayable in monthly installments in the tenure of one year.