The ambitious scheme for promoting entrepreneurship among the Scheduled Caste (SC) community — Venture Capital Fund for Scheduled Caste entrepreneurs — has since its introduction in 2014-15, witnessed a continuous fall in budgetary allocation. From Rs 200 crore in 2014-15, the allocation for the current financial year (2016-17) has drastically been reduced to Rs 40 crore and the actual expenditure by the department was only Rs 0.01 crore in 2015-16.
The social justice and empowerment ministry, which runs the scheme, has said that owing to a delay in the receipt of utilisation certificates (proof of using the funds) from Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI) — which is the venture capitalist for the scheme — has led to the subsequent reduction in its budgetary allocation.
Sources aware of the development said that non-receipt of utilisation certificates from IFCI was the reason for cutting down the revised estimates (RE) by the finance ministry from Rs 200 crore to Rs 0.01 crore in 2015-16 and lowering the budget estimate (BE) to Rs 40 crore in 2016-17.
As per the rules of the scheme, once the funds are provided for a particular financial year, the nodal ministry has to be provided with utilisation certificate for that period by the IFCI as proof of usage of that amount.
Official sources on their part said that under the scheme, Rs 200 crore meant for 2014-15 was released as late as December 2014. A lesser provision of Rs 102 crore was made under the scheme during the year 2015-16.
The social justice ministry is now mulling the possibility of setting up a strong and effective mechanism for pursuing IFCI Ltd to use the allocated amount in full and to also provide the utilisation certificates well in time so that the allocation for this scheme is not reduced every year, sources added.
The scheme was approved by the NDA government in December 2014, which is implemented by IFCI. It was launched as a social sector initiative to be implemented nationally in order to promote entrepreneurship among the SC population in India as well as to promote social and financial inclusion of the community.
It is especially meant for those SC entrepreneurs who are inclined towards innovation and growth technologies. Under it, concessional finance is provided to such entrepreneurs and the assets created will help in forward/backward linkage.
