Over 2.5 million street vendors apply for PM-SAVANidhi scheme

Known as the PM SVANidhi-Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor’s Atma-Nirbhar Nidhi, the scheme opens a special window for providing hassle-free loans to these hapless vendors who lost their daily earnings due to the corona crisis.

Banks have so far sanctioned micro-credit to more than 1,2 millon applicants and about 5.35 lakh loans have been disbursed. 

In Uttar Pradesh, more than 6.5 lakh applications have been received, out of which about 3.27 lakh have been sanctioned and 1.87 lakh loans have been disbursed. 

Stamp duty has been exempted for the loan agreement of SVANidhi Yojana in UP.

Vendors who had left for their native places due to Covid-19 lock down are eligible for the loan on their return. The provision of loans has become hassle-free as one can upload the application online on their own at any common service centre or Municipal office or by going to a bank. 

Banks are also reaching the doorsteps of people to provide loans for helping them start their ventures. “There was a time when street vendors did not go inside the bank but today the bank is going to their homes,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi sid, appreciating the hard-work done by the bank staff.

In order to ensure fast implementation of the scheme with transparency, accountability and consistency, a digital platform with web portal/ mobile app has been developed to administer the scheme with end-to-end solution. The IT platform integrates the web portal/ mobile app with UdyamiMitra portal of SIDBI for credit management and PAiSA portal of MoHUA to administer interest subsidy automatically. The scheme incentivises digital transactions, ie, receipts/ payments using digital means like UPI, QR-codes of payment aggregators, RuPay debit cards etc by the street vendors through monthly cash back. 

Secretary in the ministry of housing and urban affairs, Durga Shanker Mishra, had earlier tweeted that his ministry was working with all concerned stakeholders to make the process smooth and effortless to realise the objective of Atma-Nirbhar Bharat.

Covid-19 pandemic lockdown has shown the resilience of local traders and with help from the government they can definitely bounce back to business and strengthen their livelihoods. Most of the street vendors who were given loan through the SVANidhi scheme are repaying their loan on time proving that small-time borrowers do not compromise on their honesty and sincerity.  

Hardeep Singh Puri, MoS, housing and urban affairs while reviewing the implementation status and progress of PM SVANidhi Scheme, had tweeted that this is a positive step towards the making of an AtmaNirbhar Bharat, where every Indian is a stakeholder in the nation’s progress and way forward.

Urban local bodies are playing pivotal role in the implementation of the scheme. They are leveraging the network of all stakeholders, namely street vendor’s associations, Business Correspondents (BCs)/ agents of banks/ micro-finance institutions (MFIs), self-help groups (SHGs) and their federations, digital payment aggregators like BHIM, PayTM, GooglePay, BharatPay, AmazonPay, PhonePe etc in administering the scheme successfully.