The government has disbursed Rs 17.6 billion in 17,547 loan cases so far under a special scheme of Prime Minister’s Youth Programme launched to ensure good opportunities of employment and economic empowerment.
Chairperson of Prime Minister’s Youth Programme, Leila Khan said on Friday that the recovery rate is 90 percent with 10 percent Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratio.
These are subsidised business loans at 6 percent markup for a period of eight years and are granted under PM’s Youth Business Loan Scheme after satisfactory evaluation of borrower’s business feasibility by the bank.
Similarly, under PM’s Interest-Free Loan Scheme more than 250,000 interest-free loans amounting to Rs. 5.6 billion have been awarded to poorest of the poor in 427 Union Councils of 44 districts across Pakistan. Around 62 per cent of the loan, beneficiaries are female, and recovery rate of the scheme is 99 percent, she said in an interview with APP.
Leila Khan shared statistics of youth schemes under the programme which she termed as a remarkable initiative of the PML-N government for socio-economic development of youth in a bid to combat soaring unemployment in the country.
She said this programme has a broad canvas of schemes enabling youth and poor segments of the population to get good opportunities of employment, economic empowerment, acquiring skills needed for gainful employment, access to IT and imparting on-the-job training for young graduates to improve the probability of getting a productive job.
Leila Khan said Prime Minister’s Youth Programme includes six schemes – PM’s Youth Business Loan Scheme, PM’s Interest Free Loan Scheme, PM’s Youth Skill Development Programme, PM’s (National) Programme for Provision of Laptops to Talented Students, PM’s Fee Reimbursement Scheme for Less Developed Areas, and PM’s Youth Training Scheme.
She said PM’s Youth Skill Development Scheme has so far trained 75,000 youth both male and female in more than 100 demand-driven traded across Pakistan as per NFC award quotas. Training classes of another 25,000 trainees under Phase III (Batch-II) has commenced on January 2, 2017.
The chairperson said 33 percent of total training slots are reserved for female trainees. Madaris graduates and disabled youth are also catered to under this scheme.
She said under PM’s (National) Programme for Provision of Laptops to Talented Students Phase-I and II, so far more than 182,000 laptops have been distributed among PhD/MPhil/MS, Masters and Bachelors students of 97 Higher Education Commission (HEC) recognised universities across Pakistan.
The distribution of remaining 17,000 to 18,000 laptops will be completed by January 15.
Moreover, the process of delivery of laptops to universities under Phase-III of the scheme has been initiated, and HEC has planned to distribute another 100,000 laptops among eligible university students by March.
The HEC has also initiated procurement process for Phase-IV of the scheme simultaneously.
It is worth mentioning that under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) component of Youth Laptop Scheme Phase-I, HEC has established e-class rooms and laundry facilities at IBA Sukkur and COMSATS Islamabad.