The government proposed to enroll at least 50 per cent of rural women in the country as members of self-help groups over the next five years, and link these SHGs to banks, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech.

He said that the Women's SHG movement is bringing about a profound transformation in rural areas, and today over 22 lakh such groups are linked with banks.

Mukherjee stated that the corpus of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh would be raised to Rs500 crore from the exiting Rs100 crore in recognition of its role as an instrument of socio-economic change and development. He said the RMK has been working towards the facilitation of credit support or micro finance to poor women and has developed a number of innovative schemes for their benefit.

Mukherjee also announced that the Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna is being restructured as the National Rural Livelihood Mission to make it universal in application focused in approach and time bound for poverty eradication by 2014-15. Here also, stress will be laid on the formation of Women SHGs.

Apart from providing capital subsidy at an enhanced rate, it is also proposed to provide interest subsidy to poor households for loans upto Rs1 lakh from banks.