Meeting housing shortage biggest challenge: Maken

New Delhi, Dec 6 (IANS) Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Ajay Maken Thursday said that the biggest challenge before policy makers and industry was to meet the housing shortage of 18.78 million at the beginning of 12th Five Year Plan period.

“Unless liberal norms with greater floor area ratio (FAR) and population density norms are adopted, we will not able to fulfil this gap,” said Maken at the inaugural session of ACETECH – 2012, a conference of architecture, construction and engineering consultants here.

Delineating the strategy to meet the target of 18.78 million houses in the country, he said that his ministry had already started implementing the strategy to achieve the objectives.

Since the shortage exists mostly in the affordable housing sector, the government has announced the establishment of a Credit Risk Guarantee Fund Trust with an initial corps of Rs.1,000 crore for making available housing loan on easy terms.

With this, people belonging to economically weaker sections (EWS)/low income groups (LIG) will get loans up to Rs.5 lakh without any third party guarantee or collateral security.

As part of the strategy, the government has also planned to pump in more money under the second phase of the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) through states and municipalities.

“We are going to put Rs.45,000 crore and hope the states will also equally contribute, thereby making available Rs.90,000 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan period for construction of houses,” said Maken.

IANS 2012-12-06 23:26:11