Parul
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has announced to build a Mudra Mitra committee to help traders’ community seeking loan under Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana. Speaking on the second day of national traders conclave 2018, CAIT president BC Bhartia announced about the soon to be formed committee. He said Mudra is an extremely innovative financial inclusion scheme launched by PM Narendra Modi and traders should take full benefit of it.
“Mudra is funding traders and helping them expand. Those people who are not being financed by bank and are dependent on money lenders can now come into the mainstream and take loan via this scheme. We are receiving a number of complaints that banks are not permitting loans on flimsy conditions. One of the reasons being, ordinary small traders don’t know the conditions of the scheme. So CAIT has decided to form a Mudra Mitra committee in each district.” Bhartia informs SME Futures.
Under this committee, each district will have a team of people (the number of people has not been decided yet), chosen from the traders community only. These people will be trained in each and every aspect of the Mudra Yojana, and further, they will act as facilitators. Bhartia adds, “we will choose some prominent persons who are spotless to act as facilitators who will help the person seeking loans. If the bank denies loans traders can share their grievance with us, which we will forward to respective central government departments.”
Bhartia explains that the committee will not be directly connected to the government scheme. The committee will act as helping hand to make the process easier for traders facing difficulties in receiving loans. He says, “our role will be restricted, we are not guaranteeing MUDRA loan, nor are we promoting the scheme. The Mudra Mitra team will stick to its role as a facilitator and will give traders a better understanding of the scheme and help them to file and process the correct paper works for application.” The loans availed as per this scheme can be used for multiple purposes, like buying machinery or plant, renovating the infrastructure or purchasing vehicles for commercial purposes. Until now as per the official site of PMMY in the financial year 2017-2018 amount sanctioned for loans is 56405.07 crore while amount disbursed is 52126.66 crore. In the conclave, there were several traders who raised the issue of bank denying their loans.
While discussing Mudra loans CAIT secretary Praveen Khandelwal ensured traders present at the conclave that they will try to lower the interest rate on loans. “Many traders take loans to build their business, but face difficulties in repayment of loans. We are trying our level best to reduce the interest rate to the extent of farmers loans which is four to six per cent. It will help our community a lot.” Khandelwal informs that they are in talks with officials of the central government on the interest rate reduction. As of now, multiple banks are providing different interest rates according to the growth stage i.e. Shishu, Kishore and Tarun.
