Street Vendor Loan

The Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme was launched to empower indigeneous street vendors by extending micro loans to them. One of the other objectives of the scheme, launched on June 1, 2020, is to facilitate the street vendors’ holistic development and economic upliftment, among other things.

As a part of the initiative, the authorities intend on providing collateral-free working capital loans of up to ₹20,000 to an approximate total of 50 lakh Indian street vendors. With the scheme, the government aims to assist the street vendors with the resumption of their business in urban areas as well as peri-urban/rural areas in the wake of the pandemic. 

Additionally, back on July 17, 2020, the central government had launched a mobile application for the street vendors. Every street vendor who is a beneficiary of the PM SVANidhi Yojana must have this app installed on their phone to track the status of services that they have availed through the programme.

The PM SVANidhi scheme also incentivises transactions made through digital mediums such as the following:

1. UPI QR codes belonging to payment aggregators

2. RuPay Debit Cards

3. Google Pay

4. BharatPe

5. PhonePe

6. Amazon Pay

• Interest subsidy @7% per annum on regular repayment of the loan for street vendors

• Cashback up to ₹1,200 per annum on undertaking prescribed digital transactions

The PM SVANidhi Yojana is available for beneficiaries belonging to only those states/UTs that have known notified rules and schemes under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. If you are a street vendor residing in a state or a union territory that has laws drafted with the intention of protecting your interests, you can apply for the street vendor loan. However, there are also a set of additional criteria that you will have to fulfill in order to avail the street vendor loan. Let us understand these.