The Stand-up India Scheme, launched in 2016 to promote entrepreneurship at the grassroot level, focuses on economic empowerment and job creation, primarily for women entrepreneurs. The scheme completed its seven years on April 5, but it has been extended till 2025, sources from the Ministry confirmed. The objective of the Stand-Up India Scheme was to ensure that women entrepreneurs, and people from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes can avail bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore.
Here are the top five highlights of the scheme:
1. Loan sanctioned grew by more than 10 times
As of March 31, 2023, Rs. 40,710 crore has been sanctioned under the Stand-Up India Scheme to 180,636 accounts. Between 2018 and 2023, the amount of loan sanctioned under the scheme grew by almost 11 times, as the amount of loan sanctioned stood at Rs. 3,683 crore in 2018 and grew to more than Rs. 40,000 crore in 2023. Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister, said, “It is a matter of pride and satisfaction for me to note that more than 1.8 lakh women and SC/ST entrepreneurs have been sanctioned loans worth more than Rs. 40,600 crore.”
2. More than 80% of loans sanctioned to women
Out of nearly 1.8 lakh accounts registered under the scheme, women borrowers constitute more than 1.4 lakh, thus accounting for more than 80 per cent of the total accounts. As per the data released by the Ministry of Finance, over 1.44 lakh loans worth Rs. 33,152 crore have been sanctioned to women under the Stand-Up India Scheme.
3. 65% rise in the number of SC-ST borrowers
There has been a rise of 68.8 per cent in the number of borrowers from scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities between 2021 and 2023. While there were around 21 thousand borrowers from the SC and ST communities in 2021, the number stood at more than 35 thousand in 2023. A total of 26,889 loans worth Rs. 5,625 crore and 8,960 loans worth Rs. 1,932 crore have been sanctioned to scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) under the Stand-Up India Scheme, according to recent government data.
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