Naya Pakistan Housing Development Authority: Rs378bn being spent to provide low-cost housing: Gill

ISLAMABAD: The Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Political Communications Dr Shahbaz Gill on Thursday said a total of Rs378 billion is being spent to provide low-cost homes to middle-class homeless people under the Naya Pakistan Housing Development Authority (NAPHDA) during the current fiscal year.

Speaking at a presser, Gill said the government has recently released Rs 0.4 billion to finance 8,000 low-cost houses for the deprived people.

The authority has built and handed over 7,485 houses to low-income people in the country, he said, adding the government has approved the mortgage banking laws, besides changing tax regime for the housing sector.

“Since the approval of mortgage law, the bank has started issuing loans for construction of houses and those who are refusing to give housing loans would be made accountable,” he added.

He said all out efforts are being made to create an environment for constructing as many houses as we can as there is a shortage of around 15 million houses throughout the country.

“With the construction of five million houses, 80 percent shortage of houses would be restrained in the country,” he added.

Gill said the bank would be providing 80 percent loan with five to seven percent interest rate on the actual price of home and the remaining 20 percent would be borne by the house owner.

On the construction of first 100,000 houses, the government would pay Rs300,000 per house subsidy to the low-income owners, he said, adding the banks would give loans Rs3.5 million on easy installment of Rs14,000 per month.

“The prime minister has approved digitalization of land record and to abolish Patwari system in the Islamabad Capital Territory [ICT] to ensure transparency,” he added.

He went on saying that the record of housing societies in the ICT would be uploaded on the website of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for getting online information and checking their NOC status.

Gill said the prime minister has approved some 403 commercial projects in a short span of 40 days, while approval of 78 other projects is in progress.

He added that the federal government would approve some 11 new commercial projects next week.

Sharing the progress of Punjab government, he said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led provincial government has approved 700 projects in a short period of seven month.

Whereas the Sindh government has approved only 19 projects in the last four months compared to 250 applications submitted for approval.

Responding to a question on the austerity drive by the prime minister, he said PM Khan’s visit to Sri Lanka cost only $34,800 dollars, whereas, ex-premier Nawaz Sharif had spent some $276,000 during his visit to the same country back in 2016.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021