developed for convenience of NPS subscribers.
The Retirement Advisers (RAs) are appointed by PFRDA to engage in the activity of
providing personalized advice on pension, retirement and NPS thereby extending its outreach.
The RAs can be an individual, registered partnership firm, body corporate, or any registered trust
or society. The online platform has been developed to facilitate registration of an
individual/entity as Retirement Adviser. In order to ease the process of registration of subscribers
through Retirement Advisers a hyperlink is provided in welcome screen of RA. This link will re-
direct the user to eNPS where he/she can enter RA code and initiate the process of subscriber
registration. The Pension Sanchay; a dedicated website (www.pensionsanchay.org.in) is an
initiative of PFRDA for increasing financial literacy with special emphasis on concepts of
pension and retirement.
Swavalamban Scheme
To encourage the workers in the unorganized sector to save voluntarily for their old age, an
initiative called Swavalamban Scheme was launched in 2010. It is a co-contributory pension
scheme whereby the central government contributes a sum of ₹ 1,000 per annum in each NPS
account opened having a saving of ₹ 1,000 to ₹ 12,000 per annum.
Rural Housing Fund
The Rural Housing Fund was set up in 2008-09 to enable primary lending institutions to
access funds for extending housing finance to targeted groups in rural areas at competitive rates.
Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana
There are a large number of small business units, estimated at around 5.77 crore in the
informal sector, running small manufacturing, trading or service businesses, who find it difficult
to access formal systems of credit. The loan requirement of these units is generally below ₹ 10
lakh. While a number of initiatives were taken in the past to improve access to formal credit
channels for such units, there was still a significant and large section to which the loan/ credit
facilities did not percolate. For such units a scheme, namely, Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana
(PMMY) was launched in 2015, to enable income generating small business enterprises to have
access to loans. Accordingly, lending institutions would finance micro entrepreneurs up to ₹ 10
lakh. PMMY is a national mission aimed at increasing the entrepreneurial activity of existing
small business and encouraging first generation entrepreneurs.
Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Limited (MUDRA), is a refinance
institution set-up by the government for development of micro units by extending funding
support to encourage entrepreneurship in India, mostly from non-corporate small business sector.
Under the guidelines of PMMY, MUDRA has launched three innovative products namely
Shishu, Kishor, and Tarun, which signifies the stage of growth and funding needs of the micro
units or entrepreneur. MUDRA shall refinance through state level institutions, NBFCs, MFIs,
regional rural banks, nationalized banks, private banks and other intermediaries. Any Indian
citizen who is involved in income generating activity such as manufacturing, processing, trading
and service sector and whose credit need is less than ₹ 10 lakh can approach either banks, MFIs,
financial institutions or NBFC for availing of MUDRA loans under PMMY. It has been since
decided to extend funding support under PMMY for activities allied to agriculture also.
The government has taken various steps towards effective implementation of the Scheme.