With an eye to the approaching general elections, the government Monday announced the setting up of a Rs.200 crore venture capital fund to promote entrepreneurship among the Scheduled Castes.
The Industrial Finance Corporation of India will set up the fund that will provide concessional finance to entrepreneurs from the community, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said.
"I propose to provide an initial capital of Rs.200 crore, which can be supplemented," said the minister, while presenting the inetrim budget for fiscal 2014-15.
He said that an allocation of Rs.48,638 crore has been made for the Scheduled Castes sub-plan and Rs.30,726 crore for the tribal sub-plan, and any shortcomings could be addressed when the regular budget is presented.
In another move, the finance ministry also announced adding Rs.100 core to the India Inclusive Innovation Fund to help small and medium entrepreneurs.
The fund is being set up by the National Innovation Council and the ministry of small and medium enterprises and has a corpus of Rs.500 crore.