In his Budget Speech for Financial Year 2015-16, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley proposed the creation of a Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank, with a corpus of Rs.20,000 crore, and credit guarantee corpus of Rs.3,000 crore. Following this, Prime Minister Modi later launched the bank on April 8, at a function at Vigyan Bhavan in the national capital. Since then, three years have passed, and now we may look back what we have achieved.

On the occasion of completion of three years of the flagship programme’s launch, the Prime Minister last week tweeted that the Mudra Yojana was furthering a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance among youth and women. "...I am delighted to see how Mudra Yojana has brought prosperity in the lives of many," he said and also invited the beneficiaries of the scheme to share their success stories, adding that he would meet some of them at his official residence on April 11.

According to latest available data, 3,48,80,924 Mudra accounts have been opened in 2015-16, 3,97,01,047 in 2016-17 and 3,69,03,984 in 2017-18. The sanctioned amounts in these three years stand at Rs 1,37,449.27 crore, Rs 1,80,528.5 crore and Rs 1,81,901.12 crore, respectively. The figures look good. Additionally, it is encouraging to see the steps taken under the scheme over these years, such as intensive publicity campaigns, simplification of application forms, Credit Guarantee Scheme, refinance from MUDRA Ltd, weekly video conferences to monitor the progress, etc.

In 2013, the NSSO survey found that India has 5.77 crore small business units, mostly individual proprietorships, which run small manufacturing, trading or services activities. Most of these enterprises are owned by people belonging to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Classes. Only 4% of such units get institutional finance. To address this concern, the Mudra scheme has been designed, and the results seem positive, as reflected by official figures.

I invite your opinions.