The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in a statement has said that the central government has covered a total of 50 lakh street vendors under PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbharNidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme.
Started on 1 June 2020, PM SVANidhi 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 incentivised with a seven per cent interest subsidy and digital transactions are rewarded with cashback up to Rs 1,200 per year.
The statement added that this collective endeavour resulted in the disbursement of 65.75 lakh loans, benefiting over 50 lakh street vendors, with a total value exceeding Rs 8,600 crore.
“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,” it added. Notably, the ministry has allocated targets to all states and union territories for the identification of beneficiaries and loan disbursement.
The ministry informed that states, in turn, have assigned targets to their respective cities, with the aim of achieving them by 31 December 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 the program’s implementation.
However, all states are actively participating in the scheme to provide tangible benefits to street vendors, it added.
Promoting digital transactions, participating lending institutions/banks and digital payment aggregators (DPAs) have offered digital onboarding and training.
These collaborations have resulted in over 113.2 crore digital transactions worth Rs 1,33,003 crore, with Rs 58.2 crore in cashback disbursed to beneficiaries.
“The PM SVANidhi scheme has exceeded our expectations by reaching over 50 lakh beneficiaries in just over three years. This achievement underscores our commitment to empowering street vendors and integrating them into formal financial systems,” said Hardeep Singh Puri, M Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs.
