New Delhi, Feb 11 (KNN) Union Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Nitin Gadkari has said that the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) has accorded guarantee approval to 67,171 loan accounts of women entrepreneurs for an amount of Rs 3,366.63 crore as of December 12, 2020, in the current financial year.

He informed Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a question on the number of women entrepreneurs who benefited under the government scheme for easy credit availability.

''The accounts approved during FY20 for women entrepreneurs under CGTMSE to support their business expansion and growth stood at 1,24,984 involving Rs 5,367.38 crore,'' he added.

 Jointly set-up by the MSME Ministry and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), CGTMSE offers credit guarantee to financial institutions to provide collateral-free loans to MSEs. The government had increased the loan disbursal limit from Rs 1 crore to Rs 2 crore. Moreover, the scheme’s corpus was also enhanced from Rs 2.5 lakh crore to Rs 7.5 lakh crore.

The government had extended the guarantee of Rs 45,215.35 crore in 8,38,947 loan accounts in FY20 up from 30,168.57 in 4,35,520 accounts in FY19, according to the MSME Dashboard data published by the MSME Ministry.