On July 28, 2020, Kerala government announced a new scheme namely “Chief Minister’s Entrepreneurship Development Programme” to address the issues of shortage of working capital and availability of credit faced by startups and small entrepreneurs amid COVID-19 pandemic. The programme will be implemented through the Kerala Financial Corporation (KFC), which will also be launching three new schemes to protect existing establishments from the threat of closure.
- The programme aims to identify 2,000 entrepreneurs per year and plans to launch 1,000 new small and medium ventures every year for the next five years, creating 5,000 new ventures.
About Chief Minister’s Entrepreneurship Development Programme:
-Eligible firms would get loans upto Rs 10 crore as working capital on the basis of purchase orders already received.
-Companies coming up with innovative need- based products or services would be eligible for an assistance of Rs 1 crore and IT firms that have been approved by SEBI-accredited venture capital funds would get Rs 10 crore.
-KFC will provide loans up to 90% of the project cost subject to a maximum of Rs 50 lakh at 10% interest.
The government will give 3% interest as subsidy thereby; the net interest rate will be 7%.
Selected candidates will be given five days of entrepreneurship training and guidance.
Recent Related News:
On 29th May 2020 Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced on a Rs.1500 crore Kerala Fiber Optic Network(K-FON) project executed by the association of Bharat Electronics Limited(BEL), RailTel Corporation (Public sector companies) and SRIT and LS Cables (Private sector companies) to provide free internet access for the poor by December 2020 and become the first state to declare the internet as a fundamental right of the citizen.
About Kerala:
Chief Minister– Pinarayi Vijayan
Capital– Thiruvananthapuram
Governor– Arif Mohammad Khan
