The government and the World Bank signed a $100 million loan agreement to support producer organisations and enterprises, especially women entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu.
- This would promote rural enterprises, facilitate their access to finance, and create employment opportunities for youth, particularly women, in selected blocks of Tamil Nadu across 26 districts, directly benefitting over 400,000 people.
Highlights
- The Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Project will create an enabling environment for producer organisations and enterprises to promote businesses across the select value chains.
- Based on the analysis, communities will identify commodities and subsectors in the value chain for preparing business plans.
- 30 percent of the financing for these business plans will be through a matching grant programme from the project and the remaining 70 percent will be leveraged from other financial institutions.
- It will effectively support eligible households from socially and culturally disadvantaged groups which harness their existing assets, skills, and resources and which break their entry barriers to value-added economic activities.
- It would also help in enhancing their ability to access finance, markets, technology, and related support services.
- Not only this, it would help them graduate to value-added economic activities with higher returns such as garment manufacturing and food processing units, eco-tourism ventures, and businesses around creative industries.
Implementation of the project
- The Project will be operational in 120 blocks across 3,994 villages in 26 Districts of Tamil Nadu with 411,620 direct beneficiaries. It will work with targeted households that are already part of Self-Help Groups (SHGs).
- The project will be rolled out in a phased manner – 26 blocks will be taken up for implementation in all project districts in the first eight months, followed by 52 blocks by the end of 12 months, and the remaining 42 blocks by the end of 18 months from initiation of project implementation.
- A new platform has been developed known as the Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Marketplace under which selected innovations and start-up ideas will be tested or scaled up.
