Govt to expedite loan sanction for street vendors

The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is working on integrating application programming interface (API) between SVANidhi portal and various banks, in order to expedite the disbursement of loan to street vendors under the Modi government’s PM SVANidhi scheme.

To begin with, the ministry has launched the API integration between the SVANidhi portal and SBI’s eMudra portal, to avoid delay in sanctioning loans. The API enables the exchange of data between two or more applications.

"This will help quick disbursal of loans," said an official in the Ministry.

The Ministry launched PM SVANidhi Scheme on June 01, 2020, to provide affordable working capital loan to street vendors to resume their livelihoods adversely affected due to Covid-19 lockdown.

The Urban Affairs Ministry has received 25 lakh applications mostly from vendors of street food, fruits and vegetables, in which loans have been sanctioned to 12 lakh applicants.

The scheme targets to help over 50 lakh street vendors who had been vending on or before March 24, 2020, in urban, peri-urban and rural areas, with a working capital loan of up to Rs. 10,000, repayable in monthly installments within a year.

On timely/early repayment of the loan, an interest subsidy of 7% will be credited to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. There will be no penalty on the early repayment of the loan.