AGARTALA, Sep 29 (TIWN): Finance Minister Bhanu Lal Saha on Tuesday inaugurated the PM Mudra Yojana at Sukanta Academy.

Addressing the inauguration program, Minister Bhanu lal Saha said that the scheme is essential for the small and micro sector industries, which requires small amount of investment. The bank administrations have to organize awareness programs on the Mudra Loan scheme to reach the benefits to more number of people.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the promised Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Ltd (MUDRA) Bank on 8 April, 2015 with a corpus of Rs 20,000 crore and a credit guarantee corpus of Rs 3,000 crore. The launch was the fulfillment of an announcement made earlier by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

MUDRA scheme has rightly classified the borrowers into three segments, the starters, the mid-stage finance seekers and the next level growth seekers.

To address the three segments, MUDRA has launched three loan instruments, Shishu: covers loans upto Rs 50,000/- Kishor: covers loans above Rs 50,000/- and upto Rs 5 lakhTarun: covers loans above Rs 5 lakh and upto Rs 10 lakh

Initially, sector-specific schemes will be confined to “Land Transport, Community, Social & Personal Services, Food Product and Textile Product sectors”. Over a period of time, new schemes will be launched to encompass more sectors.

MUDRA operates as a refinancing institution through State/Regional level intermediaries. It refinances NBFCs/MFIs and also banks, primary lending institutions etc.