New Delhi, Apr 8 (IANS): More than 40.82 crore loans amounting to Rs 23.2 lakh crore have been sanctioned under Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) since its inception eight years back.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, "Since the launch of the scheme on April 8, 2015, as of March 24, 2023, about Rs 23.2 lakh crore has been sanctioned in 40.82 crore loan accounts. About 68 per cent of accounts under the scheme belong to women entrepreneurs and 51 per cent of accounts belong to entrepreneurs of SC, ST and OBC categories. This demonstrates that easy availability of credit to the budding entrepreneurs of the country has led to innovation and sustained increase in per capita income."

The MUDRA scheme has helped in generation of large-scale employment opportunities at grassroots level and also proved a game changer while boosting Indian economy, she added.

The scheme was launched by the government to facilitate easy collateral-free micro credit of up to Rs 10 lakh to non-corporate, non-farm small and micro entrepreneurs for income generating activities.

The loans under PMMY are provided by member lending institutions (MLIs), i.e. banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), micro finance institutions (MFIs) and other financial intermediaries.