As contact-intensive sectors such as travel, tourism and hospitality start looking up post the pandemic, the Centre on Wednesday allocated Rs 50,000 crore for their faster revival which can add to employment generation and overall economic recovery.
The fund will be provided by way of the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) under which financial institutions provide emergency loans to pandemic-hit sectors that can avail of loans without any collateral.
The Centre enhanced its corpus from Rs 4.5 lakh crore to Rs 5 lakh crore in order to provide easy loans to contact-intensive sectors.
The decision was taken by the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Loans worth Rs 3.67 lakh crore have already been sanctioned under the scheme that was introduced in the midst of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The sector provided eight crore jobs in the country in FY2020, according to official data.