Artisans to get ₹15,000 as incentive under Vishwakarma scheme

livemint.com:

₹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.