PAiSA- Portal for Affordable Credit and Interest Subvention Access

On the 26th of November, the Government of India launched a web portal namely PAiSA under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for the beneficiaries under the DAY-NULM scheme.

The sole reason behind the launch of this portal was to directly get connected with the beneficiaries ensuring more transparency and effectiveness in the delivery process.

The launch ceremony was held in New Delhi with the presence of prominent figures like Mr. Durga Shankar Mishra, the then secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, who gave an introspection about the objectives and mission of the portal.

What is PAiSA?

The term PAiSA stands for “Portal for Affordable Credit and Interest Subvention Access”. PAiSA is a centralized digital medium that will aid to process the interest subvention on bank loans to the beneficiaries under the DAY-NULM (Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana- National Urban Livelihoods Mission).

The design and development of the web platform were completed by Allahabad Bank which is the Nodal Bank. All the states and Union Territories and every commercial bank, RRBs, and cooperative banks were expected to be on board by the end of 2017.

A day-long National Workshop on Municipal Finance and Urban Planning was held before the launch of the digital platform by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The sole motive of the workshop was to identify the main areas of concern in the system of Municipal Finance and Urban Planning and delving into the options to resolve them. More than 300 delegates were invited to the workshop including seniors and expert officials to focus the limelight on the best practices.

What is DAY-NULM?

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana- National Urban Livelihoods Mission is a scheme by the Government of India to alleviate poverty by the method of skill training.

This scheme replaced the earlier scheme named “Aajeevika”. The objective of the scheme was to make 0.5 million people skilled per annum from the urban localities along with a total of 1 million people from the rural background by the end of the years 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Every year, India produces grossly 12 million workers. But deep research shows only 10% of them are skilled, which means a mere 1.2 million of them can provide skilled work, whereas this is 50% in a developed nation like China.

According to reports, India was expected to produce a 47million skilled population approximately by the end of this year.

The initial phase of the project covered only 790 cities, and in the long run, the government has decided to extend these measures to a whopping 4041 cities and towns.

Benefits of PAiSA

• It will strengthen the direct connection between the central government and the beneficiaries of the DAY-NULM scheme.
• Enhance the transparency and efficiency in the product delivery process.
• Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of subvention under DAY-NULM will be done regularly and is supposed to provide timely monetary support to emerging small-scale entrepreneurs.

Objectives of PAiSA

• DBT to ensure the growth of small entrepreneurs by proper monetary support.
• To enhance the transparency in the system by plugging in the pilferage and leakages in the transfer of financial aids to the beneficiaries.

The PAiSA scheme will surely benefit the small entrepreneurs massively in terms of finances.