Self Employment Programme of urban poor

The Self Employment Programme of urban poor is a component of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM). It provides financial assistance to individuals/groups of urban poor for setting up gainful self-employment ventures/ micro-enterprises, suited to their skills, training, aptitude and local conditions.

Eligibility

1. Individuals : Age : 18 Years and above
2. No minimum educational qualification is required for prospective beneficiaries under this component. However, where the identified activity for micro-enterprise development requires some special skills, appropriate training must be provided to the beneficiaries before extending financial support.
3. Group : The group enterprise should have minimum 3 members with a minimum of 70% members from urban poor families. More than one person from the same family family should not be included the same group.
4. The percentage of women beneficiaries under SEP is to be not less than 30 percent. SCs and STs must be benefited at least to the extent of the proportion of their strength in the city/town population of poor. A special provision of 3 percent reservation is being made for the differently-abled and atleast 15 percent is earmarked for the minority communities.

Financial assistance

1. The financial assistance available to urban poor in setting up individual and group enterprises will be in the form of Interest subsidy on the bank loans. Interest subsidy, over and above 7% rate of interest will be available on a bank loan for setting up of individual or group enterprises. The difference between 7% p.a. and the prevailing rate of interest will be provided to banks under NULM. Interest subsidy will be given only in case of timely repayment of loan. Suitable certification from banks will be obtained in this regard.
2. The Maximum unit Project Cost for individual micro-enterprises cases is Rs 200,000 (Rs Two Lakhs). The Maximum unit Project Cost for a group enterprise is Rs10,00,000(Rs Ten Lakhs).
3. Repayment schedule ranges from 5 to 7 Years after initial moratorium of 6-18 months as per norms of the banks.

Selection of beneficiaries

The Community Organisers (COs) and professionals from Urban Local Body (ULB) will identify the prospective beneficiaries from among the urban poor. The community structures formed under Social Mobilisation & Institutional Development (SM&ID) component of NULM viz: Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Area Level Federations (ALFs) may also refer prospective individual and group entrepreneurs for purpose of financial assistance under SEP to ULB. The beneficiaries may directly approach ULB or its representatives for assistance. Banks may also identify prospective beneficiaries at their end and send such cases directly to ULB.

To access the complete scheme guidelines, click here.

Source : NULM portal