Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2023-24 in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. , Photo Credit: PTI
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced a one-time small savings scheme for women to mark India’s 75 years of independence.
“Commemoration” Amrit Mahotsav of IndependenceA new one-time small savings scheme, Mahila Samman Savings Certificate, will be made available for a period of two years till March 2025,” Ms Sitharaman said while presenting the Union Budget.
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Small savings certificate will have a fixed interest rate of 7.5 per cent for two years. The deposit can be made in the name of woman or girl child. The maximum deposit amount has been capped at ₹2 lakh and the scheme will also have the facility of partial withdrawal.
The Union Minister said that women self-help groups (SHGs) have achieved remarkable success by adding rural women to 81 lakh SHGs under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihoods Mission.
“We will enable these groups to reach the next stage of economic empowerment through the formation of large productive enterprises or clusters, each with thousands of members and professionally managed,” she said.
The budget envisages that through supportive policies, the SHGs will be able to scale up their operations to serve larger consumer markets, as has been the case with many start-ups called ‘unicorns’.
The Union Budget 2023 saw an increase in the amount allocated to the Ministry of Women and Child Development to Rs 267 crore from Rs 25,172.28 crore allocated in 2022-23.
The biggest allocation of Rs 20,554.31 crore has been made for Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 schemes, Rs 1,472 crore has been allocated for Mission Vatsalya (Child Protection Services and Child Welfare Services), Mission Shakti (Mission for Protection and Empowerment for ) has been allocated Rs 3,143 crore. women).
Autonomous bodies including Central Adoption Resource Agency, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and National Commission for Women have been given ₹168 crore, a marginal increase from ₹162 crore last year.