pm-street-vendors-atmanirbharnidhi-pm-svanidhi

Background

  • Street vendors symbolise a very momentous constituent of the urban informal economy and play a substantial role in assuring the availability of goods and services at reasonable rates at the doorstep of city dwellers. 
  • They are known as vendors, Hawkers, Thelewala, Rehriwala, Theliphadwala etc. in different places. 
  • The goods provided by them include vegetables, fruits, ready-to-eat street food, tea, Pakodas, loaves of bread, eggs, textile, apparel, footwear, artisan products, books/stationery etc.
  • The services include barber shops, cobblers, pan shops, laundry services etc. 
  • The COVID-19 pandemic and consequential lockdowns have adversely impacted the livelihoods of street vendors. 
  • They usually work with a small capital base and might have consumed the same during the lockdown. 
  • Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide credit for working capital to street vendors to resume their business.

Introduction

  • Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs embarked on a scheme called PM Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) to empower Street Vendors by not only extending loans to them but also for their holistic development and economic uplift. 
  • The scheme intends to facilitate collateral-free working capital loans of up to INR10,000/- of one-year tenure, to approximately 50 lakh street vendors, to help resume their businesses in the urban areas, including surrounding peri-urban/rural areas.

Objectives

  • The scheme is a Central Sector Scheme i.e. fully funded by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs with the following objectives: 
    • To facilitate working capital loans up to `10,000; 
    • To incentivize regular repayment; and 
    • To reward digital transactions
  • The scheme will help formalize the street vendors with the above objectives and will open up new opportunities for this sector to move up the economic ladder.

Illustration of Benefits

  • Interest subsidy @ 7% yearly on standard loan repayment.
  • Cashback upto INR1200/- per annum on undertaking specified digital transactions
  • Eligibility for enhanced next tranche of loans
  • Close to 2 million applications have been received under this scheme, of which 752191 have been sanctioned, and 218751 loans have already been disbursed.

Eligibility Criteria: 

The PM SVANidhi scheme is open to all street vendors who are marketing in urban areas before March 24, 2020. 

The eligible vendors are specified as per the following criteria:

  • Street vendors in the guardianship of a Certificate of Vending/Identity Card issued by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)
  • For the vendors, who have been recognised in the survey but have not been allocated a Certificate of Vending/Identity Card; a Provisional Certificate of Vending would be forged for such vendors through an IT-based Platform. 
  • ULBs are stimulated to issue such vendors the permanent Certificate of Vending and Identification Card instantly and thoroughly within one month
  • Street Vendors left out of the ULBled identification survey or who have initiated vending after fulfilment of the survey and have been administered a Letter of Recommendation (LoR) to that result by the ULB/Town Vending Committee (TVC)
  • The vendors of enclosing development/peri-urban/rural areas vending within the geographical boundaries of the ULBs have been given a Letter of Recommendation (LoR) to that effect by the ULB/TVC.

Capacity Building & Financial Literacy

  • An all-around capacity-building scheme will be designed to build the abilities of different stakeholders like BCs/ Agents of lending organisations like banks/ NBFCs/ MFIs, SHGs/ federations, implementing entities like ULBs/ TVCs and digital payment aggregators to assure influential delivery of the Scheme. 
  • Capacities of digital payment aggregators like NPCI and payment aggregators will be leveraged to impart economic literacy to road vendors for enabling onboarding on digital platforms.

Conclusion

  • With many street vendors going out of trade during and due to the pandemic, the government saw that there was an urgent requirement to aid these micro-entrepreneurs to kick start their businesses again. 
  • And this is why the PM Street Vendor's Atma Nirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi Scheme) was undertaken by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on June 01, 2020. 
  • It conjoins with the government’s doctrine and the notion of an Atmanirbhar Bharat.