The government targets to disburse Rs 1.22 lakh crore loan to micro and marginal businesses under MUDRA scheme by the end of the current fiscal year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.
Launching a mega credit drive under the MUDRA scheme at a Punjab National Bank (PNB) event, Jaitley said till now as much as Rs 24,000 crore has been disbursed under the scheme to about 37 lakh small entrepreneurs.
There is hardly anyone today who doesn’t have a bank account.
— Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister
By funding the unfunded segments, the MUDRA yojna, according to the FM, is focusing on creation of jobs.
These poor people need not give loan guarantee, neither they have resources to give the security. We have given them this facility.
— Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister
Handing out loan sanction letters to several entrepreneurs, Jaitley stressed that the banks will sanction loans based on the usage of money and not favouritism.
He said the government aims to cover around 1.25-1.75 crore small business people under MUDRA to disburse this sum of Rs 1.22 lakh crore by March 2016.
MUDRA has been established as a subsidiary of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) with an initial corpus of Rs 5,000 crore to provide capital to all banks seeking refinancing of small business loans under Prime Minister Mudra Yojna (PMMY).
PMMY loans fall into three categories under the scheme – Shishu (up to Rs 50,000), Kishore (Rs 50,000-Rs 5 lakh) and Tarun (Rs 5-10 lakh).
The current focus of the government is on Shishu category of micro loans, which encompass a range of small activities like shop-keepers, fruit sellers, vegetable vendors, mechanics, barbers, cobblers, small manufacturing units and a lot of other small service sector enterprises which borrow from money lenders and informal sources.
(With inputs from PTI)
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