New Delhi: India’s nodal body for promoting Khadi products, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), helped set up over 1 lakh new manufacturing and service units resulting in the creation of over 8.25 lakh jobs under the Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP). KVIC was able to achieve the feat even if the country was under a partial lockdown for three months in the last financial year.
This is for the first time since the launch of the PMEGP Scheme in 2008, that KVIC has established over one lakh new units in a financial year. These 1,03,219 units have been established at a total capital of nearly Rs 12,000 crore out of which KVIC disbursed a margin money subsidy of Rs 2,978 crore while the bank credit flow was nearly Rs 9,000 crore. The margin money subsidy of Rs 2,978 crore given by KVIC in the last financial year is also the highest since 2008 "A whopping 8,25,752 new employment were created across the country, which is also the highest so far under PMEGP," KVIC said in a statement sent to ETV Bharat.
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According to the latest data, the number of units and employment created under PMEGP has gone up by 39% each as against the job creation and unit establishment in FY 2020-21, while the subsidy amount also witnessed a jump of 36% in FY 2021-22. The number of units set up under PMEGP since 2014-15 has increased by 114%, while employment creation has gone up by 131% during the same period. Similarly, the amount of subsidy disbursed also went up by 165% in the year 2021-22.
KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena says this big thrust to local manufacturing and self-employment in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has done wonders. "A large number of youths, women and migrants were prompted to take up self-employment activities under PMEGP. Further, a slew of policy decisions taken by the Ministry of MSME and KVIC to expedite the execution of projects under PMEGP helped KVIC achieve its best ever performance,” Saxena said. KVIC, in recent years, has taken a number of initiatives for the effective implementation of PMEGP.
In 2016, KVIC introduced an online portal for PMEGP. Before 2016, the filing of applications was done manually and on average, only 70,000 applications were received annually. After the implementation of the online portal, KVIC now receives an average of 4 lakh applications every year. PMEGP portal enables the applicants to track their applications without any human intervention. In another major step, KVIC has also started geo-tagging of all PMEGP units so as to verify the actual physical status of the units and their performance at any point in time. So far more than 1 lakh PMEGP units have been geo-tagged. This also enables any person to locate the PMEGP units using a mobile app.
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