PM hails contribution of Stand Up India Scheme
Recently the Prime Minister of India has appreciated the role of Stand-up India initiative in empowering SC/ST communities and ensuring women empowerment.
Stand UP India scheme was launched by the Ministry of Finance on 5 April 2016 to promote grassroots entrepreneurship with a focus on economic empowerment and employment generation.
This scheme has been extended till the year 2025.
Objective:
- Promotion of Entrepreneurship in Women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Category
- To provide loans to green field enterprises in manufacturing, services or trading sector and activities allied to agriculture.
- At least one SC/ST borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch of scheduled commercial banks Rs. 10 lakh to Rs. Providing bank loan facility between 100 lakhs.
Bank Loan Facility:
The objective of this scheme is to encourage all bank branches to provide loans.
Interested applicants can apply under the scheme through the following means:
- directly at the branch or,
- Through Stand Up India Portal (www.standupmitra.in) or,
- Through Lead District Manager (LDM).
Eligibility for Loan:
- SC/ST and/or women entrepreneurs, who are above 18 years of age.
- Loans under the scheme are available only for green field projects. Green field, in this context, is the undertaking of the beneficiaries of the manufacturing, services or business sector and agriculture related activities.
- In case of non-individual enterprises, 51% of the shareholding and controlling stake should be held either by SC/ST and/or women entrepreneur.
- The borrower should not be a defaulter of any bank/financial institution.
- The scheme envisages a ceiling amount of ‘up to 15%’ which may be provided in convergence with Central/State schemes.
- In any case, the borrower has to pay at least 10% of the project cost as his contribution.
Achievements:
- Rs 40,710 crore has been sanctioned in 180,636 accounts in the last 7 years under the Stand-up India scheme.
- Under this scheme more than 80% loans have been given to women.
Source – Indian Express
