BackArtisans to get ₹15,000 as incentive under Vishwakarma scheme
The scheme also has a corpus of ₹250 crore for quality certification, branding, advertising, publicity and other marketing activities.
PremiumNew Delhi: The Union government is set to launch the PM Vishwakarma scheme to support artisans and workers on 17 September.
Prime minister Narendra Modi will launch the scheme at the India International Convention & Expo Centre, Dwarka in the national capital.
Under the scheme, beneficiaries will get ₹15,000 each as toolkit incentives through e-vouchers or eRUPI, apart from collateral free enterprise development loans at concessional rate of interest. Further, the artisans would also get an incentive of ₹1 per transaction for maximum of 100 transactions per month, showed a presentation prepared by the MSME ministry.
The artisans would have to go through a skill verification phase followed by a five-day training session. They would provide with an advanced training session for 15 or more days and during the training period they would get a stipend of ₹500 per day, the presentation showed.
The scheme also has a corpus of ₹250 crore for quality certification, branding, advertising, publicity and other marketing activities.
The scheme was approved by the cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA) on 16 August with an outlay of ₹13,000 crore for a period of five years (FY24-28).
After the Cabinet approval, the ministry in a statement had mentioned of the toolkit incentive and sops for digital transactions.
It said that under the scheme, artisans and craftspeople will be provided recognition through PM Vishwakarma certificate and ID card along with a credit support of up to ₹1 lakh (in the first tranche) and ₹2 lakh (second tranche) with a concessional interest rate of 5%.
The concessional interest rate would be subject to interest subvention cap up to 8% and a credit oversight committee may revise the subvention cap in line with the prevailing interest rates, the presentation showed.
The credit guarantee fess would be borne by the central government.
The scheme will provide support to artisans and craftspeople of rural and urban areas across the country and 18 traditional trades have been identified as initial beneficiary sectors. The identified artisans and craftsmen include carpenters, boat makers, blacksmiths, hammers and tool kit makers, locksmiths, goldsmiths, potters, sculptors, stone breakers, cobblers, shoesmiths, masons, coir weavers, traditional toy makers, barber garland makers, washermen and tailors.
The eligibility requirements include a minimum age of 18 years and the applicants should not have availed loans under similar credit based self-employment schemes such as Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi, Mudra scheme among other central and state government scheme in the past five years.
The applicants would have to give a self-declaration and the due diligence would be done by banks.
The registration and benefits would also be restricted to one member of a family.
As per the presentation, the implementation would be done with a creation of a national steering committee, state monitoring committees, district implementation committees and at lowest level of the implementing organizational structure would have the field level agencies including banks and skilling centres among others.
Queries sent to the MSME ministry and the prime minister’s office remained unanswered till press time.
The Union budget for FY24 has first mentioned that the government would come up with the scheme to support traditional artisans and craftsmen.
Prime Minister Modi in his Independence Day speech last month had said that the government would roll out the scheme within a month.
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