Mudra Scheme Promotion for MSMEs to Start Soon

In order to address the issue of credit crunch in the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector, the government said it will hold pan-India Mudra promotion campaigns from September 27 to October 17.

A total of 50 campaigns will be organised by the Department of Financial Services (DFS) under the Ministry of Finance.

"The campaign will start on September 27 at Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, where Union Minister for Railway and Coal Piyush Goyal will participate. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari will participate in another function on October 2 at Gandhinagar in Gujarat," the ministry said in a statement.

The lending target under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana for 2017-18 has been fixed at Rs 244,000 crore, which is double of that in 2015-16.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier said the scheme made a significant contribution to the funding of the unfunded and the under-funded.

According to him, priority in lending will be given to Dalits, tribals, backward classes, minorities and women.

As part of the Mudra promotion campaigns, on October 2, functions will be held in Dehradun and Guwahati, where Ajay Tamta, Union Minister of State for Textiles, and Rajen Gohain, Minister for State for Railways, respectively, will take part, the statement said.

There will be three events in different parts of the country on October 3.

"One campaign will be held in Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh where Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi will be present. In Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Vishnu Deo Sai, Minister of State for Steel, will participate in one function while Jaswantsinh Sumanbhai Bhabhor, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, will participate in the event at Agartala in Tripura," it said.

State-Level Banking Committees (SLBC) of different states will participate and coordinate all these campaigns.

Mudra promotion campaigns will be held at various places like Patna, Shimla, Chandigarh, Chennai, Srinagar, Indore, Ludhiana, Meerut, Jodhpur, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Daman, Nagpur, Panaji, Rajkot, Shillong, Bhopal, Kavaratti, Kolkata, Silvasa, Mumbai, Muzaffarpur, Aizawl, Salem, Hubli, Thiruvananthapuram, Puducherry, Jaipur, Ranchi, New Delhi, Faridabad, Gorakhpur, Jammu, Jamnagar, Mangalore, Gangtok, Pune, Imphal, Kohima, Port Blair and Itanagar.

The objective Mudra scheme is to fund and promote microfinance institutions, which would in turn provide loans to micro and small businesses. It is expected that 5.77 crore small business units in the country will benefit from this scheme, which in turn will bring a sea change into the economy and the business ecosystem in the country.