A total of 42.7 lakh loans amounting to ₹5,152.37 crore had been disbursed to street vendors under the PM SVANidhi scheme out of which only 3.98 lakh or 9.3% were to hawkers from the minority communities, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs told the Rajya Sabha.
The PM SVANidhi is a micro-credit scheme which was launched by the government in 2020 to provide handholding support to street vendors to tide over pandemic-induced economic stress. It facilitates collateral-free loans of ₹10,000, with subsequent loans of ₹20,000 and ₹50,000 with 7% interest subsidy.
The data shared by the Ministry in reply to a question by MP Dr. John Brittas on Monday shows that there was a decline in the share of loans to street vendors of minority communities with 10.23% in 2020-21, 9.25% in 2021-22 and an all-time low of 7.76% in 2022-23.
In 2020-21, 2,10,457 loans were disbursed to minorities while it was 98,973 loans in 2021-22 and 88,609 in 2022-23.
“The data pertaining to the loans given under PM SVANidhi draws a bleak picture for minority street vendors,” said Dr. Brittas.
“Albeit the minorities constitute around 20% of the total population of the country, their representation amongst street vendors is reported to be manifold owing to myriad socio-economic reasons,” he added.
According to the data shared by the Ministry, the State-wise disbursal of loans seemed to be aligned with its population, with Uttar Pradesh disbursing the maximum number of loans at 11,22,397, while Sikkim gave out just one loan.
Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh also gave the largest number of loans to hawkers from minority communities at 95,032.
