PM SVANidhi App Launched to Provide Credit to Street-Vendors

The Secretary, Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Durga Shankar Mishra, has launched the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) mobile application in New Delhi. Under the scheme, the street vendors are going to be provided with credit facility and this will act as a sourcing platform for the lending institutions and their functionaries on the field.

Highlights                                                                                                                                          

This app is going to enable the Business Correspondents of banks, Micro Lending Institutions, NBFCs etc. to ensure maximum coverage under the scheme as these people have the maximum proximity with the street vendors. Apart from this, the app will also provide paper-less lending facilities to the institutions and the street vendors will also be benefitted by this.

In this regard, the web portal with the same facilities has already been launched but this application has now been developed to ensure easy access and more coverage under this scheme. The features of the application include:

• Vendor search in the survey data
• e-KYC of applicants
• Processing of Applications
• Real-time monitoring

This application can be downloaded from the Google Play Store by the lending institutions and also their field functionaries.

Since the launch of the PM SCANidhi Web Portal, more than 154000 street vendors have already applied for working capital loan across all the states and UTs and of those applications, 48000 applications have already been sanctioned by the lending institutions.

The scheme has the aim of benefitting 50 lakh vendors who were working on or before March 24, 2020, in urban areas including those from surrounding semi-urban areas. The maximum amount of working capital loan that can be availed is Rs 10000/- whereas the same will have to be repaid within a year. If the loan is repaid properly, there will be an interest subsidy of 7% per annum to be credited to the beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer.

Apart from these, the scheme also has the provision of cashback of Rs 100 per month for promoting digital transactions. The vendors can also ask for more amount if the loans are repaid on time.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020