The Assam government on Friday re-launched an old scheme, SVAYEM Scheme. It aims of providing self-employment to around 2 lakh youths of the state.
About the Scheme
- It is called as Swami Vivekananda Assam Youth Empowerment (SVAYEM) yojana
- The scheme announced by the Hon’ble Finance Minister of Assam in his budget speech on 7th February, 2017
- It is a flagship program to provide financial support to the youths of Assam to take up income generating activities in the manufacturing, trading and service sector.
- Objectives:
- To generate employment opportunities in rural as well as urban areas through setting up of new ventures as well as growing existing ventures.
- To provide financial assistance to micro and small business entities engaged in the manufacturing, trading and services sector.
- To provide financial assistance for enhancement of income level of traditional artisans ensuring sustainable growth.
- All districts of Assam including autonomous district councils are covered under the scheme.
- The latest version of the scheme worth Rs 1000 crore, would provide Rs 50,000 each as seed money to selected youths to start business ventures.
- The 2 lakh beneficiaries would have to be part of self-help groups, joint liability groups
- A new portal which will be launched for the registration.
- The scheme could get repeated annually with the possibility of increasing the number of beneficiaries.
- To claim benefit of the scheme, the applicants would have to be below 40 years of age, must have passed matriculation and should be part of existing self-help groups.
- Under this scheme, financial assistance will be provided for enhancement of income level of traditional artisans ensuring sustainable growth.
Criticism
In the last version of the scheme, instead of benefiting 1 lakh youths as planned it managed to get only around 7,000 beneficiaries due to lack of adequate support from banks.