10,000 Delhi street vendors get loans under PM SVANidhi

The scheme rolled out in June 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19 is a microcredit facility with which collateral-free loans up to Rs.50,000 are given to street vendors

New Delhi: Loans to 10,000 street vendors in Delhi were disbursed on Friday under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM-SVANidhi) scheme implemented by the union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA), officials said.

(Representative Photo)

With this, the milestone of 200,000loan disbursements in Delhi will be crossed, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who heads the MoHUA, said at the mega camp organised by the state-level bankers’ committee.

“The SVANidhi yojana is aimed to restore the Swarozgar, Svavlamban, and Swabhimaan of street vendors,” the minister said.

“….Now, street vendors are no longer solely dependent on informal credit channels where they were forced to pay exorbitant interest rates. The government has provided them with an alternative,” he added.

The scheme rolled out in June 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19 is a microcredit facility with which collateral-free loans up to Rs.50,000 are given to street vendors. The beneficiaries can avail Rs.10,000 as the first tranche, and upon successful repayment, they are eligible for a loan of Rs.20,000 and a third tranche of Rs.50,000 upon repayment of the second loan.

Under the scheme, regular repayments are incentivised with a 7% interest subsidy, and digital transactions are rewarded with cashback up to Rs.1,200 per year.

VK Saxena, lieutenant-governor of Delhi, Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, minister of state for finance, Meenakshi Lekhi, minister of state for external affairs and culture, and Harsh Vardhan, Delhi MP, were among the other dignitaries present at the event.

Puri said that loans to 6.9 million street vendors amounting to Rs.10,678 crores have been disbursed to date. In the recently announced interim budget for 2024-25, the Union government reduced the budgetary allocation for this scheme to Rs.326.32 crore from Rs.468 crore allocated in the previous year.