Stand Up India Scheme: Over 81% account holders are women

The Ministry of Finance has launched several schemes in past seven years which comprise of several special provisions that empowers the women. One such scheme is “Stand-up India scheme” under which 81% of the account holders are women. All these schemes have financially empowered the women to lead a better life and fulfil their dreams of being an entrepreneur. These schemes have benefitted the women in the manner stated below.

Stand-Up India Scheme

This scheme was launched on April 5, 2016 in order to promote the entrepreneurship at the grass root level for the economic empowerment and job creation. This scheme seeks to provide the institutional credit structure to reach out to underserved sector of people like Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Women Entrepreneurs. It seeks to enable them to participate in the economic growth of the country.  This scheme was launched with the objective of facilitating the bank loans ranging between Rs.10 lakh and Rs.1 crore to one Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe borrower and to one woman borrower per bank branch in order to set up a Greenfield enterprise. As on February 26, 2021 it has more than 81% of the account sanctioned to the women entrepreneurs.

Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY)

This scheme was launched on April 8, 2015 to provide the loans up to 10 lakhs for the non-corporate, non-farm small or micro enterprises. These loans are called as the MUDRA loans under PMMY. The loans are provided by the Commercial Banks, RRBs, MFIs, NBFCs and Small Finance Banks. Under the scheme, MUDRA has created three products called ‘Shishu’, ‘Kishore’ and ‘Tarun’ that signifies the stage of growth or development. Under the scheme, around 68% or 19.04 crore accounts have been sanctioned to women entrepreneurs which amount to Rs 6.36 lakh crores.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2021