Govt takes steps to provide micro-financing to women

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, May 4 (UNI) To ensure economic empowerment of women, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has taken up a number of initiatives to ensure easy access to the lending operations of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh (RMK) for women through micro financing.

Lending has been recently decentralised through 38 nodal agencies in various States and a special package for marginalised women group of the North-East region has been launched, Minister of Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury informed to the Members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee, attached to the Ministry.

Underlining the importance of low interest lending to Self-Help Groups (SHG) of women, Ms Chowdhury said that the RMK had been asked to expand its credit programme to cover at least 20 lakh Self Help Groups and to include the disaster management package in case of droughts, floods and other natural calamities.

She informed that during 2006-07, about 5.83 lakh women benefited with lending at low interest rates from the RMK without collateral and these included mostly poor women in rural and semi urban areas.

It also resulted in improved earning capacity and better living standards. She said the Government has also decided to organise workshops and training programmes for SHG of women to upgrade skill, technology and packaging of their products.

Replying to concerns expressed by the Members of the Committee, the Minister accepted that the RMK, established to address the cause of poor women in alleviating poverty and promoting empowerment, is now in a clash with commercial objectivities adopted by the private sector banks and other non-Government fund providers who had jumped in to the sector recently in a big way.

Still, the Government is actively considering to further reduce the lending rate of the RMK because most of its finance is directed towards women from the poorer and marginalised sections of society, she said.

Participating in the discussions, MPs Supriya Dutt, Viplov Thakur, P Satidevi, Francis Fathome and Luxminarayan Sharma suggested uniform regulations for all micro-finance lending institutions. They were of the opinion that the Government should ensure cap on interest rate in the proposed Micro Financial Sector (Development and Regulation) Bill, 2007 which is under consideration in Parliament. They also suggested taking up awareness programmes with the regard to the lending operation of RMK in a big way.

UNI

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