Loans to street vendors: Centre directs banks, civic bodies to work in tandem

Bhubaneswar: Union Minister Bhagwat K Karad has asked banks and civic bodies to collaborate to achieve the goals of the PM SVANidhi scheme, which was launched to help street vendors get easy loans.

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

Karad urged urban local 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 bankers’ committees (SLBCs), among others.