‘PM Trusted the Poor’: BJP’s Amit Malviya Takes Swipe at Ex-RBI Guv Rajan Over Lower-than-average Mudra Loan NPAs

Sharing a report which stated that the non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks for Mudra loans were lower than the average over seven years, BJP’s Amit Malviya on Monday lauded Prime Minister Modi while also taking a swipe at former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.

Malviya on Twitter shared a screenshot of a report by the Indian Express, published on Monday, which stated that the NPAs of loans under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana were lower than the average NPAs of the sector at 3.38 per cent over the last seven years.

He also posted a screenshot of an article from 2018 in which Rajan was quoted as saying that loans under the Mudra scheme needed to be examined “more closely” for potential credit risk.

“When country’s leader understands behavioural economics better Economists!” Malviya wrote.

“At the time when PM Modi launched Mudra loans, “leading” Economists like Raghuram Rajan warned against NPAs. 7 years later, NPAs of Mudra, are lower than the banking sector average.

“PM trusted the poor,” he said.

The Indian Express report said that bad loans under the Mudra scheme for all banks — public, private, foreign, state cooperative, regional rural and small finance — since its launch in April, 2015 to June 2022, came up to Rs 46,053.39 crore, which was 3.38 per cent of the total disbursements of Rs 13.64 lakh crore under the scheme during the period.

This was also half of the banking sector as a whole which was 5.97 per cent for the year-ending March 31, 2022, it stated.

Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency or MUDRA was launched in April 2015 by Prime Minister Modi. Under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, loans of up to Rs 10 lakh were to be given to non-corporate and non-farm small/ micro enterprises.

Since the launch of the scheme, many experts including Rajan had warned about the possibility of high NPAs.

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