Standup India: Rs 25,586 cr sanctioned to 1.14 lakh loans in 5 years; women entrepreneurs top beneficiaries

Credit and Finance for MSMEs: The Modi government’s Standup India scheme, which facilitates bank credit between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore to scheduled caste (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) and women entrepreneurs, has sanctioned Rs 25,586 crore to over 1,14,322 loan accounts as of March 23, 2021, since its launch on April 5, 2016, according to Ministry of Finance. Women entrepreneurs were the biggest beneficiaries of the scheme with 93,094 applications involving Rs 21,200 crore sanctioned followed by 16,258 applications with a sanctioned amount of Rs 3,335.87 crore to SC entrepreneurs, and 4,970 applications involving Rs 1,049.72 crore sanctioned to ST entrepreneurs, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The number of accounts and the amount sanctioned has increased 25.2 per cent and 25 per cent respectively over last year. As of March 10, 2020, Rs 20,466.94 crore was sanctioned to 91,319 loans, according to the data shared by the Ministry of Finance MoS in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on March 18, 2020. Following the announcement in the Budget speech this year by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the margin money requirement for loans under the Standup India scheme was reduced from up to 25 per cent to up to 15 per cent. Further, activities allied to agriculture were included in the scheme. Over 300 lenders have been onboarded to the scheme with over 1.5 lakh branches.

“The government has taken various steps towards effective implementation of the Scheme. These, inter alia, include provision for submission for online applications by potential borrowers through an online portal, handholding support, intensive publicity campaign, simplified loan application form, credit guarantee scheme, campaign for target group through dedicated weekly programmes, etc.,” Thakur had said.

Meanwhile, gross bank credit deployed to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in December 2020 had increased 6.6 per cent to Rs 11.31 lakh crore from Rs 10.61 lakh crore during the year-ago period, according to the RBI data. MSME sector accounted for a share of around 18 per cent in the total credit to the industry and around 5 per cent in the total non-food credit extended by the scheduled commercial banks in November 2020.