Street vendors and hawkers can now avail Rs 10,000 loan scheme ‘AtmaNirbhar Nidhi’ or Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor’s Atma Nirbhar Nidhi scheme through about 3.8 lakh common service centres (CSCs) across India, the government’s digital and e-governance services arm CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd said on Wednesday.
The scheme was announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 14 to enable street vendors to resume their activities and earn their livelihood that was disrupted by the nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak.
What is AtmaNirbhar Nidhi Scheme?
The Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi is fully funded by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs with the objectives to facilitate working capital loan up to Rs 10,000 for street vendors and hawkers.
Benefits of AtmaNirbhar Nidhi Scheme:
It will help to incentivise vendors for regular repayments. CSCs will help vendors’ enrolment in the scheme.
Under this programme, urban street vendors will be eligible to avail a working capital loan of up to Rs 10,000 with tenure of one year and repaid in monthly instalments. For this loan, no collateral will be taken by the lending institutions. All vendors need to do digital transactions and they will get a cashback offer.
According to the reports, so far, 2 lakh applications have been received by the government under the scheme and loans to 50,000 vendors have been approved. Moreover, SIDBI is the implementing agency for the scheme.
Who are eligible for a loan?
Street vendors in possession of the certificate of vending or identity card issued by urban local bodies and those who have been identified in the survey but have not been issued a certificate of vending or ID card are eligible to apply for the loan under the scheme.
The scheme intends to help formalise the street vendors and open up new opportunities to this sector.
