Around 3,00,000 youth to get loans under Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme

Around 200,000 to 300,000 budding entrepreneurs are likely to get benefit of the Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme, a component of the government’s flagship Kamyab Jawan project launched to offer soft loan facility to those having workable business ideas.

“Only 15 to 25 per cent of the total applicants may get the concessionary loans under the ‘Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme’ as it seems that some 50 to 60 per cent apparently applied in haste and got rejected for having no business plans,” Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Muhammad Usman Dar informed while highlighting the current statistics of the loan scheme.

‘YES’ was launched under the banner of Kamyab Jawan Program in October last year.

Under which Rs100 billion allocated for the youth and loans ranging from Rs100,000 to Rs5 million would be disbursed among the youth coming up with practicable business ideas.

“Some 1.3 million youth applied for the loan scheme in merely 15 days which brings it into international spotlight as a team of the United Nations has discussed this Kamyab Jawan program for attracting such a large proportion of youth, the special assistant said.

The scheme was almost in the launching process as the applications were being scrutinized and verified by making phone calls, doing Smart Message Service (SMS) and carrying out a third-party verification of the applicants.

He assured that the allocated money belonged to youth and would be spent on deserving one.

He said the loans would be distributed on equitable basis as Rs25 billion had been dedicated for the women under the YES exclusively.

Initially, the soft loans would be distributed in Sindh and then extended to the other provinces.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan will distribute loan cheques among the successful applicants of the Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) from Sindh on January 27,” he informed.

Usman Dar also said the Prime Minister’s Kamyab Jawan Program was rolled out specifically for job creation after holding 10-month long extensive deliberations.

National and International youth experts, civil societies and other stakeholders were also engaged for the purpose, he added.