Dr. Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs and Education visited Imphal on July 26, 2022 to attend the SVANidhi Mahotsav celebrations hosted by the Manipur Urban Development Agency. The PM Street Vendor’s Atma Nirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme was launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, in June 2020 to empower street vendors by not only extending loans to them, but also for their holistic development and economic upliftment.
The scheme aimed to facilitate collateral free working capital loans of up to INR 10,000 for a 1 year tenure, given to approximately 50 lakh street vendors, to help resume their businesses in urban areas, including the peri-urban/rural areas, nearby. It has scaled many milestones and till date 30.3 lakh street vendors have availed credit under this scheme.
The SVANidhi Mahotsav is being celebrated in 75 cities across India to honour the street vendors with PM SVANidhi demonstrating good credit discipline, digital behaviour and business acumen. MoS Dr. Singh handed over various awards to participating street vendors for maintaining credit discipline, adoption of digital transactions and also to the three best performing banks in credit disbursement under this scheme.