New Delhi: The number of people helped by the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC) fell to 61,394 in 2025-26, almost half of the 1,18,002 covered in 2024-25 and 1,11,309 in 2023-24, even as the corporation signed up new banks and finance companies to widen its reach, a parliamentary panel has found.
The Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, chaired by BJP MP P. C. Mohan, tabled its report on the corporation’s functioning in Lok Sabha Wednesday. It said it was surprised that beneficiary numbers had fallen despite NSFDC roping in Regional Rural Banks, Public Sector Banks and other lenders as alternative channel partners.The drop was sharper under the corporation’s credit schemes alone, where beneficiaries fell from 85,372 in 2023-24 to 41,750 the following year. NSFDC told the panel the count nearly halved because a larger share of borrowers took bigger loans that year.
But the committee linked the decline to a funding drought. The government infused no fresh equity in 2024-25 or 2025-26, and none between 2019-20 and 2023-24 either. Appearing before the panel, the Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, confirmed that no money had been given to the corporation in the last two financial years.Had the equity come through, the panel said, the number of beneficiaries could have been much higher. It noted that NSFDC, a not-for-profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, grows its asset base by only about 3 percent a year, while inflation runs at 4 to 4.5 percent, leaving the corporation shrinking in real terms without government support.An NSFDC representative told the committee the portfolio earns an average lending rate of just 3.1 percent, and that without regular equity infusion, annual loan disbursement had stagnated. The report quotes the official as saying the corporation was “not able to actually meet even the inflation” on its own.‘Incomprehensible’
