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After nearly 11 years of reasonably good performance, Goa Government’s flagship Chief Minister’s Rojgar Yojana(CMRY), introduced by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar in his earlier term in 2001 through State apex financial body, EDC Ltd., is now poised for a further expansion in its scope.
The scheme is meant for financial assistance to young entrepreneurs for self employment projects with a cap of Rs15 lakh, normally, with a break-up as follows: 50 per cent of finance interest-free, 40 per cent at 8 per cent and 10 per cent candidate’s own contribution.
Interest rebate
Managing Director of EDC Ltd S. P. Bhat said the scheme offers 2 per cent additional interest rebate to women and that the effective interest rate for the scheme worked out to around 3 per cent.
In its modified version, which has come into effect recently, the scheme provides for financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh for technically qualified youth, including professionals.
In the budget for 2013-14, presented to the State Legislative Assembly in March, Chief Minister Parrikar renamed the self employment scheme of CMRY after Verghese Kurien.
“He was a man who pioneered milk revolution in the country. I am sure that this scheme named after such a legendary person will help Goans to become self-sufficient on employment generation front,” Parrikar had said and proposed an allocation of Rs 50 crore for this scheme with plan to cover 8,000 youths in the current year.
Subsidy
He also announced an added feature saying, if loan instalments are repaid within the stipulated time, it will have a provision of giving 25 per cent subsidy for the borrowers. For loans up to Rs 2 lakh, henceforth no guarantee will be needed, he said.
Bhat said that 4,241 youths had availed the scheme since 2001, with a total sanction of Rs 94.54 crore. The total disbursed amount was Rs 78.69 crore and Rs 6.42 crore have been revoked.
As on date, EDC has 2,888 live accounts under the scheme with an outstanding amount of Rs 38.92 crore. The scheme has shown an overall recovery of 83 per cent.
Primarily, the youths have opted for taxis, general stores, cyber cafes, small businesses, garment shops, mobile galleries etc.
Sops for professionals
On Saturday, the Chief Minister reiterated that the professionals would be covered under the CMRY scheme along with entrepreneurs. He said that the scheme would be modified by introducing a lot of flexibility, but entrepreneurship would remain the core of the scheme.
Speaking at a function of Goa Entrepreneurship Monitoring Services Trust(GEMST) on Saturday, Parrikar said sometimes professionals face problems even in getting proper office space in the city. EDC can fund them for it under this scheme.
PMRY restrictions
Significantly, the scheme was born in 2001 after Parrikar started getting a lot of complaints and grievances from youth and aspiring entrepreneurs that the Prime Minister’s Rojgar Yojana (PMRY) had lot of restrictions and also some eligibility norms were too stringent and some were simply not applicable to Goa whose socio-economic indicators were much above the national averages.
The PMRY continues to fare poorly in this State, as was reported by the State Level Bankers’ Committee meetings time and again.
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