Despite all the push given by the Central government to the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana and the ‘MSME loan in 59 minutes’ scheme, banks are still struggling to meet the Rs 3 lakh crore target for lending Mudra loans, as only about Rs 2 lakh crore have been disbursed so far.
The government, in Budget 2018-19, said it intends to disburse loans of up to Rs 3 lakh crore in the current fiscal. However, as on February 22, the total loan disbursed under the Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Ltd (Mudra) scheme stood at Rs 2,02,668.9 crore as against sanctioned amount of Rs 2,10,759.51 crore, said a government data.
The scheme was launched on April 8, 2015, for providing loans up to Rs 10 lakh to the non-corporate, non-farm, small/micro enterprises. Loans under Mudra are given under the Shishu (up to Rs 50,000), Kishore (Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh) and Tarun (Rs 5-10 lakh) categories.
Being a pet scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, banks were asked to aggressively lend to small entrepreneurs, especially women and those belonging to backward castes.
In 2017-18, lending at Rs 2,46,437.40 crore had exceeded the target. In fact, MUDRA lending had exceeded targets in all the previous years.
However, with less than a month left in the current fiscal and banks falling short of the target this year, the department of financial services (DFS) is already putting pressure on them. Sources in DFS said that increasing number of banks under Prompt Corrective Action and rising bad loans under the MUDRA scheme have dragged the lending.
NPAs of state-run banks under the Mudra scheme rose to Rs 7,277 crore as of March 2018, against Rs 3,790 crore in March 2017 and Rs 597 crore in March 2016.