Centre directs banks, civic bodies to work in tandem on scheme for loans to street vendors

Union MoS for Finance Bhagwat K Karad on Saturday asked banks and civic bodies to work in collaboration with each other to achieve the goals of the PM SVANidhi scheme, which was launched to help street vendors get easy loans.

Chairing a regional-level meeting to assess the progress of the scheme in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, Karad asked civic bodies to review the applications returned by banks and resubmit them after rectification.

He also asked the civic bodies to work in a 'camp mode' and mobilise fresh applications to achieve the targets in a time-bound manner. Karad encouraged civic bodies to intensify their efforts with innovative strategies to enhance the digital onboarding of street vendors, a statement said.

He emphasised on improvement in profiling of the scheme's beneficiaries and their families to facilitate their linkages to various central welfare schemes, it added. The meeting was attended by representatives of the state governments, commissioners of municipal administrations and convenors of State Level Banker's Commitees (SLBCs), among others.