Another employment report put on hold by NDA government before elections

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 08:03:43 +0000

The Labour Bureau’s survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (Mudra) scheme will not be made public for another two months making this the third report on employment to be kept under wraps before the elections.

Image Courtesy: Livemint

New Delhi: The Labour Bureau’s survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (Mudra) scheme will not be made public for another two months making this the third report on employment to be kept under wraps before the elections, Indian Express reported on Thursday.

“The number of jobs created under the Mudra scheme will be released after the polls as the Expert Committee found anomalies in the methodology used by the Bureau in arriving at the findings,” sources said.

The multi-phase elections will start on April 11, with the counting of votes scheduled for May 23.

The Prime Minister Mudra Loan Yojana, the government’s flagship job creation programme, helps small businesses get a credit of Rs 50,000 to Rs 10 lakh from private and public sector banks, micro-finance institutions and other lending institutions.

Besides this survey, the government has not made public, the National Sample Survey Office’s periodic Labour Force Survey Report for 2017-’18, which found the unemployment rate in India at a 45-year high of 6.1% in 2017-’18. The government also reportedly failed to release the Labour Bureau’s sixth annual employment-unemployment survey, which showed that unemployment touched a four-year high of 3.9% in 2016-’17.

The Labour Bureau’s Mudra survey has hit a roadblock. According to the Indian Express, the expert’s committee asked the bureau to “reconcile some errors” at a meeting on Friday. The Labour Bureau asked for two months to do that – which means the results will not be public before the upcoming elections.

In February, the NITI Aayog had reportedly asked the labour minister to process the Mudra survey and present its findings on February 27. The survey looks at one lakh Mudra scheme beneficiaries between April 2015 and January 31, 2019.

In May last year, The Wire had reported on how the Mudra scheme may not be the large-scale job creator it was being floated as. The number of larger-sized loans – of more than Rs 5 lakh – that can create real jobs were just a tiny percentage, or 1.3%, of total loans disbursed under the scheme, an RTI query had revealed.

The code of conduct came into effect on March 10 after the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.

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New Bank Fraud Emerges in Flagship Mudra Scheme

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 06:16:32 +0000

PNB branch at Barmer was doling out Mudra loans without any checks.

Image Courtesy: metrovaartha.com

The wild fire set by the Nirav Modi bank fraud appears to be slowly advancing, scorching other banks – and as it turns out now, one of the most glamourized schemes of PM Modi. On 21 February, CBI registered a case against a senior Punjab National Bank official of its Barmer (Rajasthan) branch for “fraudulently” giving away 26 loans worth Rs.62 lakh under the Mudra scheme.

In its complaint, the CBI said that the official sanctioned loans “without conducting meaningful pre-inspection or physical verification of spot of business or residence and without ascertaining end use of the loan amount or creation of assets from the loan amount”.

The Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) – as it is officially called – is particularly vulnerable to such fraud because it is authorized to give loans up to Rs.10 lakh to small enterprises. The scheme, a favourite of PM Modi, doesn’t seek collateral for loans and the rate of interest is also low.

Mudra is a refinancing scheme, that is, it doesn’t involve direct lending from the govt. Loans are given by public sector banks, NBFCs, and MFIs. According to the Mudra website, Rs.4.7 lakh crore have been disbursed till now after the scheme was launched in April 2015.

The Barmer case has set alarm bells ringing in govt. circles because if other such cases come to light, the whole scheme will come under a cloud. The amount of funds involved is also huge. In this year’s Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had raised the target for Mudra loans to Rs.3 lakh crore, with the understanding that providing self-employment would be the most suitable way of targeting runaway joblessness in the country.

In Barmer, the accused official did not carry out any physical verification except in one case. The CBI alleged that loan applications “appears to be fake and prepared on table at office”. It also found that some borrowers lived 100 kms from Barmer, while the bank can only sanction loans to people residing within 25 kms radius of the branch.

In another bank fraud case that has come to light after the Nirav Modi fraud, CBI has registered a case against a Delhi jeweler for defrauding the Oriental Bank of Commerce of Rs.390 crore using Letters of Credit (LC), instruments that are similar to the LOUs used by Nirav Modi.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post New Bank Fraud Emerges in Flagship Mudra Scheme appeared first on SabrangIndia.

mudra scheme | SabrangIndia

Another employment report put on hold by NDA government before elections

The Labour Bureau’s survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (Mudra) scheme will not be made public for another two months making this the third report on employment to be kept under wraps before the elections.

New Bank Fraud Emerges in Flagship Mudra Scheme

PNB branch at Barmer was doling out Mudra loans without any checks.