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Street vendors have a high repayment rate for loans taken under the PM Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme with NPAs being in the 12-13 per cent range as against a total disbursal of around ₹3,600 crore. Vendors are now applying for a second tranche of the loans — of ₹20,000 — towards business expansion, said Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri.
According to a ministry official, nearly 12 lakh people have repaid loans and 300,000 are in “various stages of repayment”. Meanwhile, at least 50,000-odd applications have come in for “the other tranches”, officials told BusinessLine. Repayments are incentivised with a 7 per cent interest subsidy.
Repayments on time
The scheme also pushes for adoption of digital transactions through cashbacks of up to ₹100 per month, according to government data. Till date, nearly 13 lakh vendors are digitally active and around 19 crore digital transactions have been carried out. The cumulative cashback claimed is around ₹12 crore, ministry data show.
“The NPAs in the scheme are in the 12-13 per cent range, and this is a very manageable number. In fact, what is encouraging is many people are now applying for the second tranche and some for the third, which means repayments have been far better and higher. Most people who have taken these loans are repaying EMIs on time,” Puri said on Thursday, while announcing the launch of ‘SVANidhi Mahotsav’, a cultural festival for celebrating the success of the scheme.
Collateral-free loans
The scheme allows street vendors to take loans in the range of ₹10,000 for a period of one year, and only upon repayment, they are eligible to apply for loan to the tune of ₹20,000. On repayment of this second tranche, the vendors can opt for a third tranche of ₹50,000. These loans are collateral free.
There are 53,66,119 street vendors who have registered under this Central scheme while as many as 36,60,313 applications have been sanctioned by banks so far. Disbursals have been given to 33,23,650 applicants. The average age of applicants is 41 years, with Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh having the highest number of beneficiaries. West Bengal and Kerala — two non-BJP ruled States — are at the bottom of the list.
State Bank of India and Union Bank of India are among the PSBs that have the highest exposure to the scheme, show ministry data.
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