The fund’s first phase was launched in August this year in partnership with Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK government. (Image: Pixabay)

Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), the principal financial institution for promotion, financing and development of MSMEs on Monday announced the launch of the second phase of its Swavalamban Challenge Fund (SCF). The fund’s first phase was launched in August this year in partnership with Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK government. SCF aims to offer financial support to non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and social startups with a focus on projects addressing the climate change problem apart from sustainable livelihood, financial inclusion, and access to financial services and promoting entrepreneurship.

“The themes for second window align with the vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the commitments India made at 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) of attaining net zero emissions by 2070. We look forward to innovative proposals from pan-India which can contribute to Aatmanirbhar Bharat and decarbonization of India growth story,” said Sivasubramanian Ramann, Chairman and Managing Director, SIDBI in a statement.

SIDBI said the proposals for capital support can be submitted for undertaking pilot with an upper cap of Rs 20 lakh and up to Rs 35 lakh) for Scale-up initiative. “Digitization, sustainability and maximizing convergence with local/state or central government programme shall be an encompassing theme which shall be accorded preference during assessment. Credit connect, job creation and enterprise setting-up shall also be preferred. Community participation and impact shall be accorded priority,” SIDBI added.

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The bank had also launched in August a focused vertical for MSME clusters’ centric programmes along with a Cluster Development Fund to give a thrust to hard infrastructure support to state governments. The bank said it is working on both interventions viz., hard infrastructure (physical infrastructure) and soft infrastructure (training, skilling, marketing, technology access, design, etc.) “to strengthen clusters to evolve as model clusters and also to increase MSMEs’ access to services, thus rising up the value chain.”

Moreover, SIDBI’s 59 minutes in-principle loan approval scheme for MSMEs had sanctioned 2,35,511 loans involving Rs 78,738 crore as of November 1, 2021, official data from the MSME Ministry had showed. Out of the total loan amount sanctioned, 81 per cent — Rs 64,326 crores loans were disbursed to 2,19,526 borrowers. The share of loan applications disbursed stayed at 93 per cent in the total applications sanctioned.