Street vendors may get loans faster as government integrates PM SVANidhi portal’s API with SBI

Technology for MSMEs: In a move to expedite loan sanctioning and disbursement process under Modi government’s PM SVANidhi scheme for nano entrepreneurs, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs will be looking to integrate application programming interface (API) between SVANidhi portal and various banks. To begin with, the ministry, on Wednesday announced that it has launched the API integration between the SVANidhi portal and SBI’s eMudra portal. For integration with other banks, “a consultative meeting will be held shortly,” the ministry said in a statement. API is essentially a messenger, which enables the exchange of data (integration) between two or more applications, for connectivity between multiple devices.

The government had implemented PM SVANidhi — micro-credit scheme for street vendors on June 1, 2020, to help them recover from the Covid and lockdown impact. The scheme intends to benefit more than 50 lakh street vendors who had been vending on or before 24 March 2020. Such vendors can seek access to up to Rs 10,000 in the working capital loan, repayable in 12 monthly instalments. Vendors are also eligible for 7 per cent interest subsidy for timely or early repayment. Moreover, there is also a provision of earning Rs 1,200 per annum in cashback.

However, street vendors had urged the government for increasing the credit limit by over 2X. “The amount is not sufficient. It should have been around Rs 25,000 per annum…While there are around 1 crore street vendors in India but even 50 lakh target is good enough as it has definitely given a boost to organizing street vending in India,” Arbind Singh, National Coordinator, National Association of Street Vendors of India had recently told Financial Express Online.

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As on October 7, 2020, over 20.54 lakh applications were filed by street vendors on the portal out of which more than 7.92 lakh were sanctioned and 2,37,829 applications involving Rs 230.81 crore were disbursed, according to data available on the PM SVANidhi portal. 46 per cent of the vendors filing applications were vending fruits and vegetables, followed by 21 per cent in fast food and food items, 12 per cent in cloth and handloom items, 5 per cent in beauty and fashion accessories, 4 per cent in services and more. “For the purpose of scheme administration, an end-to-end solution through an IT platform has been developed in collaboration with SIDBI. The approved outlay for PM SVANidhi scheme is Rs 600 crores,” MoS Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri had said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha last month.

The Housing & Urban Affairs Ministry on Monday had partnered with food delivery portal Swiggy for street food vendors to reach out to a larger number of customers online. The ministry in a statement had said that along with Swiggy, it will run a pilot programme with 250 vendors in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore, and Varanasi and would help them with PAN and FSSAI registration, training on technology/ partner app usage, menu digitization and pricing, hygiene and packaging best practices.