Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank
Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank is a refinance institution for micro-finance institutions. As on date, MUDRA is conceived only as a refinance institution and not as a regulator for the micro finance institutions.
Union Budget 2015-16 has proposed to create MUDRA with a corpus of Rs. 20,000 crore, and credit guarantee corpus of Rs.3,000 crore. MUDRA Bank will refinance Micro-Finance Institutions through a Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana.
In lending, MUDRA proposes to give priority to enterprises set up by the under-privileged sections of the society particularly those from the scheduled caste / tribe (SC/ST) groups, first generation entrepreneurs and existing small businesses.
There are estimated to be some 5.77 crore small business units in India, mostly individual proprietorship, which run small manufacturing, trading or service businesses. 62% of these are owned by SC/ST/OBC as stated in the Union Budget speech of 2015-16.