Self Help Groups making rural women self-reliant

May 04, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:35 am IST - SHIMLA:

The mushrooming of Self Help Groups in the countryside is fast changing the life style of rural women in Himachal Pradesh. More than nine thousand such SHGs have become operative here and are covering more than 50 thousand rural women belonging to BPL and other poor families under the ongoing National Rural Livelihood Mission.

The mission has been implemented in five blocks in the State in the first phase and the rest would be covered in the next stages in coming four years, said an official spokesman here on Sunday. In order to strengthen and provide greater financial support to the poor families with the goal of poverty alleviation through social mobilisation, institutions and capacity building, financial inclusion, saturation approach, skill generation and a portfolio of sustainable livelihoods, the NRLM has been made operational in the hill State from April, 2013. The State was given Rs. 14.92 crore for initiating the programme.

The SHGs have been linked with Banks for micro financing. Under the programme, the Banks would provide a loan of Rs.. 2 to 3 lakhs on seven per cent interest to each SHG for initially starting its venture which would be repeated up to Rs. 10 lakh depending on the performance of the SHG.

Interest subvention

These SHGs will also get additional interest subvention of 3 per cent on regular repayment of loan, reducing the effective rate of interest to 4 per cent. This interest subvention is being provided by the Government of India. For coordinating and smoothening of the SHG Bank linkages and delivery of interest subvention, a sub-committee of State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) has been constituted.

As of today, 6345 SHGs have been linked with the Banks providing them the credit of Rs. 59.09 crore against target of Rs. 148 crore. Revolving fund of Rs. 2.97 crore has also been distributed amongst the groups by the Department, said the spokesman. During the current fiscal, the focus will be on capacity building and institutionalization of SHGs. The major focus would be on social mobilization, institution building, communisation and to create human resource, he added.

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