Credit and Finance for MSMEs: More than 1.33 lakh new entrepreneurs have been facilitated under the Stand Up India scheme including more than 1 lakh women promoters during the six years of its operation, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday. The scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 5, 2016, to support women and scheduled caste & scheduled tribe (SC/ST) entrepreneurs in setting up greenfield enterprises. Stand Up India enables bank credit between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore to at least one SC/ST borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch of scheduled commercial banks.
Sharing data on Twitter through her office handle and in a statement by the Ministry of Finance to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the scheme, the minister said, “Around 81 per cent of the loan accounts belong to women, with sanctioned amounts standing at nearly Rs 21,000 crore under the Stand Up India Scheme, highlighting the efforts being made towards women-led development as envisaged by PM Modi.”
As of March 21, 2022, Rs 30,160 crore was sanctioned to 133,995 accounts (entrepreneurs) since the inception of the scheme, of which Rs 24,809.89 crore was sanctioned to 1,08,250 women entrepreneurs, Rs 3,976.84 crore to 19,310 SC borrowers, and Rs 1,373.71 crore to ST borrowers.
On a calendar year basis, the scheme had reported 29 per cent in 2021 in loans sanctioned and the amount involved, indicating the jump in credit requirement for launching greenfield ventures among women and SC/ST borrowers despite the second wave of the pandemic, according to the previously available data. 1,27,440 loans involving Rs 28,700.36 crore were sanctioned as of December 26, 2021, in comparison to 98,454 loans amounting to Rs 22,136.21 crore sanctioned as of December 15, 2020.
Importantly, Sitharaman in last year’s budget had reduced the extent of margin money to be contributed by the promoter out of the total project cost as a relief measure. The government had reduced it from up to 25 per cent to up to 15 per cent even as the minimum contribution from the promoter remained at 10 per cent of the project cost. The budget had also expanded the scheme’s coverage to loans for enterprises in activities allied to agriculture such as pisciculture, beekeeping, poultry, livestock, rearing, grading, sorting, dairy, fishery, etc., and services supporting these activities.
