Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Minister of Rural Development has stressed on the need for intensifying the movement for formation of Self Help Groups (SHG) and empowerment of women and asked that SHG promoting agencies such as NGOs, PRIs, facilitators and motivators should be engaged on large scale. While reviewing the performance of Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) the Minister has emphasized that in order to ensure proper coordination, National, State, District and Block level SGSY meetings should be held regularly and be monitored at appropriate levels.
The Ministry of Rural Development is implementing an ambitious programme of Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) under which 2,63,000 SHGs have been formed in the year 2004-05 and so far more than 22 lakh SHGs with membership of more than 2.2 crore have been formed. The Government of India has released Rs.1000 crore as subsidy during the last financial year. With proper monitoring and coordination with the bankers, credit worth Rs.1640 crores have been disbursed by various banks throughout the country against the credit disbursement of Rs.1300 crores during 2004-05. A growth of more than 30 per cent of credit flow has been ensured.
Highlighting the need for skill upgradation for self-employment opportunities, the Minister has desired that 10 per cent of funds of SGSY should be utilized by all DRDAs for imparting skill upgradation trainings. All DRDAs should identify the potential areas of self-employment and must ensure the skill upgradation training to unemployed youths to ensure their self-empowerment. To promote assured marketing for rural products, the Minister has also desired that proper infrastructure and market linkage be put in position. For this every DRDA have been given Rs. 5 lakh per year for creation of market infrastructure.
The Ministry is also contemplating asking State Governments to fill up the vacancies in DRDA’s by competent professionals in order to provide human resources support to them.
In order to monitor the performance closely, the Ministry has developed an on-line monitoring software and each of the DRDAs are required to enter branch wise monthly progress report on-line. It is expected that by this system, the Ministry would be able to identify the poor lending bank branches. During the last financial year, 1200 bank branches were identified whose lending was almost NIL and the matter was thereafter taken up with the Ministry of Finance and subsequently, proper follow up was ensured which resulted in improvement and enhancement in the credit flow.
During the current financial year, as against the budgetary allocation of Rs.1000 crore under SGSY, a sum of Rs.461.64 crore have been released as Central share to 543 DRDAs. The funds meant for 8 DRDAs of Manipur, 6 DRDAs of Meghalaya and Nagaland, 4 DRDAs of J&K, 2 of Arunachal Pradesh, 1 DRDA each of Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry are yet to be released due to pendency of release proposals from concerned DRDAs in proper format.
Expressing satisfaction over the result of efforts made during the last one year, the Minister has asked the officials of the Ministry to further intensify the campaign to form SHGs, their training and undertaking skill upgradation on large scale and to take up self-employment programmes on war footing so as to reduce the unemployment problem and eradicate poverty from the rural areas.
RJ/ls
(Release ID :10259)