ISLAMABAD Feb 09 (TNS): Chairperson of Prime Minister Youth Scheme (PMYS) Leila Khan Thursday said business loan amounting to Rs 20.52 billion had so far been disbursed among 20,499 youth aimed at making them self-reliant and useful citizens of the country.
“Recovery rate of the loan, provided under Prime Minister Youth Business Loan Scheme (PM YBLS), is of 91 percent,” she said.
The PML-N government, under the dynamic leadership of Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, had launched with an aim to extend financial assistance to 100,000 unemployed especially educated youth by providing them loans ranging from Rs 100,000 to 2 million.
“The prime focus of this scheme is to provide country’s youth with financial assistance to make them independent entrepreneurs so that they could contribute in socio-economic development of the country,” Leila Khan said.
She said an applicant needed to have his/her CNIC card and entrepreneurial potential as government made the pre-qualification method easy so that more youth could get benefit of this opportunity.
She informed that around 80,000 youth applied for the business loan, out of which 50,000 cases were rejected in the pre-qualification process due to lack of entrepreneurship abilities, whereas approximately half of the leftovers could not complete the banking procedure, she added.
Leila said 50 percent quota of the business loan scheme was allocated for women, but only 10 percent females applied for the facility.
Research and Public Relations Officer of PMYS Abdul Rahid Shakir said Small business loan with tenure of up to 8 years, with first year grace period, and a debt: equity of 90: 10 was being disbursed to Small and Medium entrepreneur (SME) beneficiaries across Pakistan, covering; Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
In the female quota, five percent was kept for families of martyred, widows and disabled persons, he added. “Every year 1.5 to 2 million people cross threshold of 18 years while the country is currently producing only one million jobs,” he said adding that the government needs to generate 2 million jobs to keep sustainability.
According to Labour Force Survey 2014-15, Pakistan has 134.99 million working age population and 61.04 million labour force. The number of employed labour force is 57.42 million. The unemployment rate, however, decreased to 5.90 percent from 6 percent.
Shakir informed that Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development Authority (SMEDA) had been tasked with an advisory role in the implementation of PM’s scheme by providing more than 55 updated pre-feasibilities for referencing by Loan beneficiaries and participating banks to optimally utilize their financial resources.
An Official from National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) told that an applicant have to go through different verification process. The first step was desktop verification in which bank verify the identity of client via phone call and then scrutinize client’s data by BCIL system.
Anam Mateen 23 year old an applicant from Dera Gazi Khan said that she took over her father’s medical store as proprietor. She procured the loan of Rs 255,000 through PM YBLS to purchase the inventory and enhance the business.
“With the help of this financial support, our sale went up to Rs 18,000/day from 10,000/day”, she added.
This loan, she said, had considerably increased her family business as well as created the jobs for two individuals who were working as Pharmacist and assistant at her medical store.
