Rs 494 crore loans disbursed under Mudra yojana in Odisha

Current focus of govt is on sub Rs 50,000 micro loans for small service providers and traders

Banks having operation in Odisha have disbursed loans of Rs 494.25 crore under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) as on October 5 through 105,856 accounts.

The PMMY is an initiative by the Union government to provide bank finance to the vast segment of the population occupied in the informal sector who do not have access to formal bank credit and are forced to rely on informal source of finance at high cost.

MUDRA Ltd, set up earlier this year as a subsidiary of Small Industries Development Bank of India with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore, will provide refinance to all banks who give small business loans.

 

PMMY loans fall into three categories, Shishu (up to Rs 50,000), Kishore (loans above Rs 50,000 and up to Rs 5 lakh) and Tarun (above Rs 5 lakh and up to Rs 10 lakh).

In the Shishu category, Rs173.17 crore has been disbursed to 92,676 beneficiaries. The borrowings under the Kishore and Tarun categories stood at Rs 194.31 crore and Rs 126.75 crore respectively.

All public sector banks, regional rural banks and private sector banks in the country have a target to disburse Rs 1, 22,000 crore loans during the current financial year to small and micro enterprises up to Rs 10 lakhs.

The current focus of the government is on the Shishu category of micro loans for small service providers and traders like shopkeepers, fruit sellers, vegetable vendors, mechanics, barbers, cobblers, small manufacturing units etc who go to money lenders in the absence of access to bank loans.

Recently, Odisha government in a letter to the SLBC (State Level Bankers' Committee) had expressed its intention to add more than one lakh new enterprises in a year under the yojana.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY), where each bank branch should give credit to around 25 business units, there is scope to add more than one lakh new enterprises each year taking into account the number of branches in the state, Panchanan Dash, secretary, state MSME department had written to SLBC.