PIB TrackerPM SVANidhi's restructured year brings vendors a credit card
One year after the Cabinet extended lending to 2030, the street vendor scheme has disbursed 21.86 lakh loans worth ₹6,294 crore and begun issuing UPI-linked RuPay credit cards of up to ₹30,000.
What happened
- PM SVANidhi completed one year of the restructured phase approved by the Cabinet on 27 August 2025.
- 21.86 lakh loans worth ₹6,294 crore were disbursed, 10.56 lakh of them to new beneficiaries.
- A UPI-linked RuPay credit card of up to ₹30,000 was introduced; 27,077 have been approved.
- Lending now runs to 31 March 2030, targeting 1.15 crore vendors including 50 lakh new ones.
- Cumulative lending stands at 1.18 crore loans worth ₹19,171 crore to 78.68 lakh vendors.
For Prelims
- PM SVANidhi: launched 1 June 2020 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for collateral-free working capital to urban street vendors.
- Restructuring: approved 27 August 2025; lending extended to 31 March 2030.
- Target: 1.15 crore vendors, including 50 lakh new beneficiaries.
- Credit card: a UPI-linked RuPay card with a limit up to ₹30,000; 27,077 approved so far.
- Letter of Recommendation: the document a vendor needs to borrow; a Vendor Migration Module now moves it between ULBs and Census Towns.
- Street Food Hubs: 50 planned, with up to ₹4 crore per hub and ₹25 lakh for notifying vending zones.
- Incentives: ₹421 crore released as interest subsidy and ₹418.78 crore as digital cashback.
- SVANidhi se Samriddhi: profiling of 51.15 lakh families and 1.59 crore sanctions under eight central welfare schemes.
For UPSC: The cleanest example of formal credit reaching an informal and mobile workforce, and of a scheme widening from lending into social security and infrastructure. Use it on urban livelihoods, informality and financial inclusion beyond the bank account.
What it is NOT: This is not a welfare transfer — the loans are repayable, and the government's own outlay appears as interest subvention and cashback, not as the principal.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS2.12 · GS3.2 · Linkage L1
Anchor
The scheme has stopped being only a lender: nearly ₹840 crore of its spending buys repayment discipline and digital habit rather than credit.
Substantiation (data)
21.86 lakh loans worth ₹6,294 crore in the restructured year; 1.18 crore loans worth ₹19,171 crore to 78.68 lakh vendors since 2020; ₹421 crore in interest subsidy and ₹418.78 crore in cashback.
Exemplification
The Vendor Migration Module moves a vendor's Letter of Recommendation between urban local bodies — a paperwork fix aimed at the fact that street vending is a mobile occupation.
Problematisation
1.18 crore loans against 78.68 lakh vendors means repeated borrowing at small ticket sizes; a ₹30,000 card is working capital, not capital, and does not by itself build an enterprise.
Way-forward
Push the Census Town coverage and the Street Food Hubs, so that vending sites are notified and serviced rather than only vendors being financed.
Position
Street vending's real deficit is legal certainty about where a person may stand and sell; credit eases the symptom, and the vending-zone notification money is the part of this scheme that treats the cause.
Deploys into: Welfare of vulnerable sections + inclusive growth (GS2.12, GS3.2) · urban informal livelihoods, micro-credit and digital financial inclusion.
Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs · 2026-08-27 · PRID 2303797 · PIB source ↗