National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) has been set up with the main objective to promote economic and developmental activities for the benefit of backward sections among the minorities, preference being given to occupational groups and women. The Corporation assists by providing loans for self employment and other ventures for benefit of minorities. Considering the minorities population in the entire country as about 15 crores (1991 census) and the number of target group as 40% (for estimation purposes), the size of the target population comes to about 6 crores which could be 1.20 crore families. The majority of population in this segment of minorities, roughly 80%, are constantly in need of small loans for sustaining their existing employment, for generation of further employment as also for meeting varied personal and social needs. The poorest among the poor need loans of very small amount but their requirement is quick delivery of loan at their door steps. Traditionally, private money lenders have been playing this role but their intentions have been to exploit the poor instead of helping them and this rather worsened plight of the poor. Over a period of time the significance of provision of credit as an instrument of socio-economic change and development is being realised and many international and national organisation including the nationalised banks have come up to provide soft loans to the poor in order to free them from the clutches of private money lenders. However, the task is gigantic and a wide gap persists in meeting the credit needs of the poor. With this in mind, the NMDFC has decided to implement the programme of micro financing. Under this programme, following two schemes are being operated :

A. MICRO CREDIT SCHEME

B. INTEREST FREE LOAN for formation and stabilisation of Self Help Groups (SHGs)
     Details of these two schemes are given in this booklet.