1 lakh loans Disbursed to SC/ST & Women Entrepreneurs by Standup India Scheme Over 5 Years

By: WE Staff | Thursday, 18 March 2021

The Indian government’s Standup India scheme, which facilitated bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore to scheduled caste (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) and women entrepreneurs, has sanctioned 1,11,619 loan applications involving Rs 24,985.27 crore as of March 2, 2021, according to the data shared by the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Anurag Singh Thakur.

Standup India was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 to support SC & ST and women entrepreneurs. The scheme offers bank loans of between 10 lakhs and 1 crore for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and women to set up new enterprises outside of the farm sector.

The announcement made by the Finance Minister NirmalaSeetharamanduring 2021 Union budget address, said that the margin money requirement for loans under this scheme has been reduced from up to 25 percent to up to 15 percent. It also permitted agricultural activities such as pisciculture, beekeeping, poultry livestock, rearing, grading, sorting, aggregation agro industries, dairy, fisheries, agriclinic and agribusiness centers, food and agro-processing, and services for benefits. The scheme includes 300 lenders with over 1.5 lakh branches connected to the scheme.

Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) said that the changes brought in by the center will pave the way for enterprises run by women or individuals from the SC and ST community to avail faster loans for manufacturing, services, or trading activities.

But the new changes still require the borrower to invest 10 percent for the new enterprise as the margin money has been reduced. So the individual has to borrow it from the state or other central schemes.

SIDBI is a development financial institution in India, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, regulated and supervised by the Reserve Bank of India(RBI). Its promotion & development program focuses on rural enterprises promotion and entrepreneurship development.

“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, campaigns for target groups through dedicated weekly programs, etc.,” says, Thakur.

As of March 2020, the highest amount was sanctioned to Andra Pradesh which recorded the highest number of accounts where Rs 1,284.11 crore was sanctioned to 5,313 accounts. Similarly, Rs 1,837.7 crore loan was sanctioned to Gujrat, 2,317.89 crores to 11,455 applicants of Uttar Pradesh, 6,834 accounts of Maharashtra received Rs 1,577.05 crore loan. Banks had deployed Rs 11.22 lakh crore to MSEs in November down from Rs 11.25 lakh crore in October but later increased 6.6 percent, that is 11.31 lakh crore.

"Timely and hassle-free credit to MSMEs is the need of the hour to help them take advantage ofthe Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative where MSMEs would b able to cope with increasing demand arising within the domestic market," says, PranavaPiyush, AGM, SIDBI.

He also said that to create awareness about the initiatives for MSMEs and improve credit linkage, SIDBI would organize a webinar, e-UdyamSangyan, for MSMEs in Goa. 

The objective of doing so is to inform about initiatives like TReDS( Trade Receivables Discounting System) and GeM (Government e Market place is an online platform for public procurement in India) platform MSMEs about SIDBIs credit initiatives such as Speed, Pratham, and Star loans that can be sanctioned and disbursed within a week to eligible MSMEs.

The scheme has extended up to 2025 and facilitates loans to at least one SC or ST borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch for setting up a new enterprise.