The Ministry of Finance announced yesterday that it had already provided about 55,000 loans under the Stand-Up India (SUPI) Scheme.
The public sector provided the most loan grants with 51,888 loans. The private sector granted only 2,445 loans while the regional banks provided 1,009 loans to support the Stand-up India Scheme. Regional rural banks also authorized 180 loans to individuals of Scheduled Castes (SC) category. The banks have also received guidelines to follow on the SUPI from the government, the ministry of Finance said.
The guidelines include collateral free loans through credit guarantee scheme, merging with state and central government schemes whenever possible, simple application forms, online application from a specific portal, handholding support, designated nodal officer for SUPI to cite a few.
The bank loans under SUPI will only be provided to the commercially viable applications according to the bank’s board approved policy.
Stand-Up India Scheme is a program designed to facilitate bank loans between 10 lakh and 1 crore rupees to a least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) borrower and at least one woman borrower in every bank branch to set up rural enterprise. The said enterprise can be in the form of manufacturing, services or the trading sector. If the enterprise is owned by several individuals, the majority of shares and control – that is minimum of 51% – must be held by either an SC/ST or a woman entrepreneur.
Prime Minister, Shri. Narendra Modi first revealed his campaign “Start-up India” on his Independence Day speech of 2015. Stand-up India was then instituted to promote entrepreneurs coming from rural background with the aim of developing those areas and therefore create jobs. The Stand-up India Scheme aims at influencing institutional credit structure to provide the underserved sector of the Indian society, more specifically, those uprooting from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Women. The mission is to provide them with a fair opportunity to participate in the economic growth of the nation. The scheme targets benefiting at least 2.5 lakh borrowers through 1.25 lakh branch network spread all over the country.
Several online platforms have been set up to facilitate the loan applications. It also contains useful information and guidelines to facilitate the understanding of the application procedure. You can visit the online portal for Stand-up India here.