by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
A Lokmat Exclusive story with Table
PM's Mudra Yogna haunting banks now
Rs 6.66 lakh crores “Unsecured” Loans doled out
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, Jan. 16
Facts are sacrosanct; more so when they are told in Parliament by the government. And these were startling when it came to narrating the success of the Prime Minister's ambitious Mudra yogna (PMMY) by the Minister himself and how the Mudra Yogna is now haunting the banks now.
Of the 15.26 crores Mudra loans amounting to Rs 7.26 lakh crores given during the past four years of the Modi regime, 13.75 crores loan accounts fall under the category of “Shishu” loans. These Shishu Loans galloped as much as Rs 6.66 lakh crores which is nearly 90% of the total loans granted.
The Parliament was also told that loans up to Rs 50,000 are classified as Shishu loans and the banks were directed by the PMO that no collateral guarantees from them be sought from seekers. All these 13.75 crores “Shishu” loans are either new accounts or given to existing entrepreneurs who wanted to set up their own “Pakoda” outlets. These were granted between April 8, 2015 to December 21, 2018. These facts were stated by none other than the Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla on January 1 in the Rajya Sabha himself. Since the Rajya Sabha was continuously disrupted, the question/answer session was also drowned in the din.
The government claimed that “Shishu loans have helped unlock the business potential of small shop owners and vendors by meeting some of their working capital requirements. These loans have helped businesses to add products to their existing offerings and increase inventory to cater to larger set of customers.”
Shukla said the average ticket size of PMMY loans and loans under Shishu category have demonstrated an increasing trend year after year.
But these have started haunting the banks as NDA government’s flagship Mudra scheme has 14 lakh defaulters and the default amount touched an all time high of Rs 11000 crores until December 21 this year. And most of these are under the Shishu category. Why ?
The first is that these loans are being given without any collateral or security, making it difficult for banks to go after defaulters. The second is the over-emphasis on banks to meet loan disbursal targets. In the race to meet the target, the credentials of loan seekers were not being properly verified.
In order to oblige the masters that be, the banks aggressively lent money under the Shishu Loans category.
In 2015-16, the target was to disburse Rs 1,22,188 crore in loan. But banks aggressively lent and gave out Rs 1,37,449 crore loan. In 2016-17, the banks again crossed the target and gave out Rs 1,80,529 and in 2017-18 (as of September) they lent Rs 2,53,677 crore crossing the target by more than 15000 crores.
Modi recently alleged that since Independence, banks lent Rs 18 lakh crores until 2008. But within the next six years, the UPA-II aggressively lent Rs 52 lakh crores- a record and this led to rising NPAs.
So what's happening with the PM's own pet PMMY which is a huge cause of worry now. No one has the answers. But for the record, self-help individuals secured Rs 50000 to each seeker to become vendors/small shop keepers.
Ends
