Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acknowledged the role played by the Stand Up India (SUPA) Scheme in empowering the SC/ ST communities and ensuring women’s empowerment as the scheme completed seven years on Wednesday.

“Today, we mark 7YearsofStandUpIndia and acknowledge the role this initiative has played in empowering the SC/ ST communities and ensuring women empowerment. It has also boosted the spirit of enterprise our people are blessed with,” he tweeted.

The PM’s tweet came in response to a tweet by the Finance Ministry which said; ”More than Rs 40,700 crore sanctioned to over 1,80,630 accounts under Stand-Up India Scheme in 7 years.”

TheSUPI Scheme, launched on 5 April 2016 to promote entrepreneurship at the grassroots level focusing on economic empowerment and job creation, has been extended up to the year 2025.

Recognising the challenges that energetic, enthusiastic, and aspiring SC, ST and women entrepreneurs may face many in converting their dream to reality, the scheme was launched to promote entrepreneurship amongst women, Scheduled Castes (SC) & Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories, to help them in starting a greenfield enterprise in manufacturing, services or the trading sector and activities allied to agriculture.

On the occasion, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, “It is a matter of pride and satisfaction for me to note that more than 1.8 lakh women and SC/ST entrepreneurs have been sanctioned loans for more than Rs 40,600 crore.”

“The scheme has created an ecosystem which facilitates and continues to provide a supportive environment for setting up green field enterprises through access to loans from bank branches of all Scheduled Commercial Banks. The Stand-Up India Scheme has proved to be an important milestone in promoting entrepreneurship among SC, ST and women,” Sitharaman said.

She said the scheme has touched numerous lives by ensuring access to hassle-free affordable credit to the unserved/underserved segment of entrepreneurs. The finance minister said that the scheme has provided wings to aspiring entrepreneurs to showcase their entrepreneurial acumen and the potential entrepreneurs hold in driving economic growth and building a strong ecosystem by being job creators is immense.

Union Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad said the scheme is based on the third pillar of the National Mission for Financial Inclusion namely funding the unfunded. The scheme has ensured the availability of seamless credit flow from branches of Scheduled Commercial Banks to SC/ST and women entrepreneurs. The scheme has been instrumental in improving the standards of living for entrepreneurs, their employees and their families.