For street vendors adversely affected due to Covid-19 lockdown, the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) was launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on June 01, 2020. To enable them to resume their livelihoods, the scheme provides affordable working capital loan to the street vendors.
Who is a vendor? According to the scheme guidelines, it is any person engaged in vending of articles, goods, wares, food items or merchandise of daily use or offering services to the public in a street, footpath, pavement etc., from a temporary built up structure or by moving from place to place. The goods supplied by them may include vegetables, fruits, ready-to-eat street food, tea, textile, apparel, artisan products, books/ stationary etc. and the services include barber shops, cobblers, pan shops, laundry services etc.
The scheme targets:
·Over 50 lakh street vendors.
·To avail the loan, a vendor should possess Certificate of Vending / Identity Card issued by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)
·The vendors, who have been identified in the survey of street vendors but have not been issued Certificate of Vending / Identity Card
·In case a vendor is left out of the survey, he/she needs to obtain the Letter of Recommendation (LoR) from Urban Local Bodies /TVC.
·Vendors can avail a working capital loan of up to Rs. 10,000, which is repayable in monthly instalments in the tenure of one year.
·On timely/early repayment of the loan, an interest subsidy of 7% per annum will be credited to the bank accounts of beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer on a quarterly basis.
·There will be no penalty on early repayment of loan.
·The scheme promotes digital transactions through cash back incentives up to an amount of Rs. 100 per month.
·The vendors can avail the facility of escalation of the credit limit on timely/early repayment of loan
·The scheme will be in place till March 2021
Till October 2020, over 24 lakh applications have been received under this scheme so far, with 557,000 applications from vendors in Uttar Pradesh, the highest across the country.