Meet to resolve bottlenecks in Antyodaya Yojana implementation

NEW DELHI: With the Centre's skill training and entreprenuership programme yet to produce desired results, four ministries will meet here tomorrow to resolve bottlenecks in its implementation and evolve a more effective way to address the issue of urban poverty.

Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Rural Development Minister Birendra Singh, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha will address the day-long conference on Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM).

"Four central ministries concerned, state governments, bankers, experts and NGOs will discuss tomorrow ways and means of scaling up skill training and credit flow for self-employment of urban poor in a bid to reduce urban poverty in a speedy manner," an official release said.

In the past two years, 4.54 lakh urban poor have been imparted skill training, out of which about one lakh, that is 22 per cent, either got jobs or were self-employed.

"The HUPA Ministry aims at scaling up placement /self-employment to at least 70 per cent for which strategies will be discussed tomorrow," the statement said.

Regarding credit flow at an interest rate of 7 per cent, total loans amounting to Rs 551 crore were disbursed to 73,476 beneficiaries for setting up individual micro-enterprises at an average loan amount of Rs 75,000 which is much lower than the permitted loan of Rs 2 lakh each.

Another Rs 54 crore was disbursed for setting up 2,527 group enterprises at an average loan amount of Rs 3.11 lakh as against the permissible limit of Rs 10 lakh each.

Extended to all the 4,041 statutory cities and towns of the country, DAY-NULM aims at reducing urban poverty by improving livelihood opportunities through skill training and skill upgradation for self-employment, subsidised bank loans for setting up micro-enterprises, organising urban poor into self-help groups, among others.

"Based on the experience of its implementation during the last two years, the government is keen to remove hurdles to enable more credit flow for self-employment of urban poor and scale up skill training," the release said.

The HUPA Ministry has also proposed to appoint a central nodal agency for speeding up disbursal of bank loans to urban poor, besides involving non-banking finance institutions and micro-credit agencies for delivery of loans.

NGOs are also proposed to be involved in a big way for giving a fillip to urban poverty mitigation programmes. Bank lending for self-employment is proposed to be dovetailed with loans under Prime Minister's MUDRA Yojana.

Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were in the forefront of implementation of DAY-NULM in the past two years, the release said.