Agartala, November 01, 2022: National Minorities Development & Finance Corporation (NMDFC) on Monday last signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ICICI Foundation for training minority youth in self-employment oriented skill sets at New Delhi.

Dr Rakesh Sarwal, IAS, CMD of NMDFC and Anuj Agarwal, COO of the ICICI Foundation for inclusive growth signed a MoU at New Delhi. The MoU will be operative for three years.

The purpose of the MOU is for convergence of training capacity in 26 ICICI Skills Training Academies and two Rural Self Employment Training Institutes with credit from NMDFC to trained minority communities candidates for self-employment.

NMDFC is a section 8 “Not-for profit” Public Sector undertaking, working under the aegis of the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Govt. of India. The prime mandate of NMDFC is to provide concessional finance for self-employment and income generation activities to the “Backward Sections” amongst the Minority Communities, namely Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains with preference being given to occupational groups & women.

The ICICI Foundation will provide details of the already trained beneficiaries & candidates undergoing skills training to NMDFC for offering credit support. Further, the ICICI training academies would provide free skills & Financial Literacy Programme (FLP) training to minority candidates recommended by NMDFC.

CMD, NMDFC said that NMDFC and ICICI Foundation share a mutual goal of serving the backward sections of the minority community and bringing them into the mainstream. Further, as credit and training go hand in hand, NMDFC would extend credit support under Term Loan, Micro Finance and Virasat Schemes to the trained candidates. The COO, ICICI Foundation committed full support of his agency to work for market based solutions for the members of the minority communities.