Sixty-eight percent beneficiaries of the Rs 32 crore loans given under the Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (MUDRA) scheme are women, predominantly from the SC and ST communities and minority families, Union Minister Smriti Irani informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour, she said that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, over 23 crore women for the first time in their life now have access to a bank account.
"They have approached formal banking institutions, presented their business plans and received 68 percent of the support out of the MUDRA Yojana, which was not gender-inclined. However, it was to support small businesses," the minister told members. Irani also said it is great investment when the government supports a woman financially and pointed out that when one looks at non-performing assets (NPAs), women have have less than one percent NPAs.
The government has ensured under the Stand-up India programme that in every district up to Rs 1 crore loan is given to women-run enterprises by every bank, she said. "Even in the Stand-up India programme, 80 percent of the beneficiaries today are the women of India," Irani said.
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The minister said the government has been more than aggressive in recognizing the women labour force. "If you look at MGNREGA, out of the 193 crore person days of work that has been generated, I can proudly say that over 54 percent of those who have been employed are women," she said.
Irani said this government is committed to the emancipation of women, especially through skilling, and apart from the interventions under the Pradhanmantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, there are over six million women, who have been trained through industrial training institutes (ITIs). As far as skilling is concerned, under the Digital Literacy Campaign, which the prime minister has started under the PMGDisha programme, over four crore Indians have been made digitally literate, out of which 54 percent are women, she said.
In her written reply on actions taken to improve job potential for women in the country, Irani said, "Under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) launched on April 8, 2015, as on February 25,2022, over Rs 33.85 crore loans have been extended, out of which Rs 23.02 crore loans (68 percent) have been extended to women category entrepreneurs."
"As per survey results, the PMMY helped in generation of 1.12 crore net additional employment during a period of three years i.e. from 2015 to 2018, out of which, 68.92 lakhs (62 per cent) were female," she said.
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