Kakinada, Feb. 14: The Micro Enterprises Promotion and Development Agency (MEPDA), East Godavari, will organize a district-level awareness programme on the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), at Gandhi Bhavan at Satyaprasanna Nagar here on Monday. The chairman and managing director of the MEPDA, Mr T. Srinivasa Rao, stated in a release here on Sunday, that the PMEGP was a credit linked subsidy programme of Central government.

It has been introduced by merging the two schemes, namely, Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) and Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP). Launched on August 15, 2008, the programme aims at generating employment opportunities through setting up new self employment ventures, projects and micro enterprises. It also planned to bring together widely dispersed traditional artisans, rural and urban unemployed youth and give them self- employment opportunities to the extent possible, at their place, he added. The maximum cost of the project or unit admissible under the manufacturing sector was Rs 25 lakh, in the business or service sector Rs10 lakh. The balance amount of the total project cost would be provided by banks as a term loan, he added.