Govt Plans To Make Micro-Lending Easier For Women, Small Businesses; Here's How

Nitin Gadkari while speaking at an interaction with Ficci FLO said that idea is to make the women entrepreneurs, small businesses avail the finance of upto Rs 10 lakh within three days.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

New Delhi: Union Minister for MSME and Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari reportedly said that the centre is planning to create a deposit-taking ‘social microfinance organisation’ in order to quickly disburse loans of up to Rs 10 lakh to women and small entrepreneurs.  As quoted by news agency PTI, Gadkari while speaking at an interaction with Ficci FLO said that idea is to make the women entrepreneurs avail the finance of upto Rs 10 lakh within three days. Though the progressive initiative cropped during the discussion with Nobel laureate and Grameen Bank founder Mohammed Yunus of Bangladesh, needs to be discussed further in detail with Finance Ministry, Gadkari said that "You (the financing entity) can register and you will get a license from RBI and you can accept deposits and giving loans to the small people. This type of mechanism we are developing for social micro & small institutions with a very simple procedure, without red tapism." Explaining further in the policy, Gadkari said that the idea is to create employment potential in the rural area And for he same, the Niti Aayog is taking initiative, and on the basis of inputs, a policy will be decided. Further in the discussion, the minister highlighted some of the major issues faced by various sectors of the economy, specially the rural lives. Acknowledging these challenges, the minister suggested that industrial clusters with special focus on handlooms, handicrafts, agro processing units needs to be created across the country to help people across the board. He also laid stress on creating a 'smart village' just like the one focused on cities. The PTI report mentioned that Nitin Gadkari in the interaction recalled his discussion with e-commerce major Amazon over increasing its exports of Indian MSME-produced goods to Rs 3 lakh crore per year from the present Rs 60,000 crore in two years. The minister reportedly said that Rs 1.20 lakh crore has been disbursed to small businesses as part of the Rs 3 lakh crore government-guaranteed loans package in the aftermath of the pandemic, and asked enterprises facing problems at the bank-end to complain about the same.