Hailing the government’s initiatives towards women empowerment amid nine years of BJP government, Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted an update on various women-focused schemes including women-led micro and small enterprises. For instance, more than 27.7 crore loans were issued to women entrepreneurs under the Mudra scheme so far. The scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2015 to enable up to Rs 10 lakh loans to non-corporate, non-farm micro and small enterprises.

Importantly, Mudra loans recorded an all-time high growth in the financial year 2022-23, on the back of post-Covid demand from the country’s hinterlands. According to the data shared in an SBI Research on the scheme in May, the sanctioned loan volume had reached a new high of 6.23 crores in FY23 from the earlier peak of 6.20 crores in FY20 that dropped to 5.07 crores in FY21 and began recovery with 5.37 crores loans sanctioned in FY22.

Among other schemes for women entrepreneurs such as Stand-Up India, more than Rs 33,000 crore loans were sanctioned to women entrepreneurs while 80 per cent of the total beneficiaries under the scheme were women entrepreneurs, Shah tweeted.

Stand Up India scheme was launched in 2016 to focus on aspiring scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and women entrepreneurs in the country. Since then, the scheme has sanctioned loan applications for 1.87 lakh SC/ST and/or women entrepreneurs amounting to Rs 42,218 crore so far, as per data available on the scheme’s website. The total applications received so far were over 2 lakh involving Rs 48,878 crore.

The Home Minister also informed that the country had more than 28 lakh women-owned MSMEs till 2023. Overall, according to the data available on the Udyam portal, there were 1.97 crore registered MSMEs, of which 1.90 crore were micro units, 5.50 lakh small enterprises and 52,264 were medium enterprises.

The minister also noted that Rs 15,922 crore worth of orders were delivered by more than 1.45 lakh women-owned MSMEs through the government public procurement marketplace (GeM) so far.

The women entrepreneurs on GeM were registered under its Womaniya programme to encourage women in business and self-help groups. According to the data shared by the commerce ministry in a statement in January this year, women MSE sellers had fulfilled over 14.76 lakh orders worth Rs 21,265 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) since 2019. Women entrepreneurs had a share of 74 per cent in the order value of products sold on GeM and 26 per cent in the order value of service categories.

Source: financialexpress.com

For more information about Business Community Visit us at Ceohub.in