With a high number of jobless youth across the State, the Punjab Government on Sunday exhorted them to avail loan welfare schemes being run by the state government to be able to find avenues of self-employment which would ensure their economic progress.
“Punjab Backward Classes land Development and Finance Corporation (BACKFINCO) is running several schemes aimed at providing loans to the youth at low interest rates which can act as a catalyst for the skilled and enterprising youth to be well off financially by initiating their own ventures,” said State Scheduled Castes (SC) and Backward Classes (BC) Welfare Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot.
BACKFINCO also provides loans for pursuing higher education, said Dharamsot adding that as per the direct loan scheme, the BACKFINCO provides loan ranging from `50,000 to `1 lakh at an interest rate of six percent.
He said that this loan can be availed to start ventures like dairy farming (three-five animals), poultry farming, growing vegetables, honey-bee keeping, carpentry or furniture or blacksmith ventures, flour mill, auto-rickshaw (passenger or freight carrying), general store (karyana, cattle, or poultry feed), hardware store (sanitary and building material, steel etc), textile or readymade garment shop, books or stationery shop, photostat machine, tailoring, agricultural implements (fabrication), automobile repair or spare parts shop, electronics or electrical sale and repair, fabrication unit, photography and videograhy, hosiery units, small scale industrial unit (manufacturing any goods or material), sweet shop or dhaba, beauty parlour and pandal or shamiana service.
Under the schemes, being run with the assistance from other corporations, the students hailing from backward classes and minorities are provided loans at an annual interest rate of three percent and 4.5 percent respectively.
Dharamsot said: “It is necessary to fulfill main criteria of BACKFINCO to avail the loans.
The candidate must be a permanent resident of Punjab with age between 18 and 55 years, and must belong to the Backward Class category as declared by the Punjab Government or minority category as declared by the Union Government.”
“The annual family income of people hailing from rural areas must be less than `81,000 and those living in urban areas must have an annual family income less than `1.03 lakhs. In case anybody wants to avail the loan in the technical category, he or she should be at least matriculate,” said the Minister adding that youth having professional
qualification would be preferred.