In order to increase the numbers of affordable houses under PMAY-Urban scheme, the cabinet is all set to approve biggest ever fund plan today to meet the requirement for building 1.2 crore affordable houses in urban areas. The Centre’s share for building houses under this scheme in the next two financial years was estimated at around Rs 60,000 crore.
In his Budget speech, Finance minister Arun Jaitley gave much focus on the affordable housing scheme. He had announced to establish Affordable Housing Fund, which will be attached to the National Housing Bank (NHB) to raise Rs 25,000 crore from non- budgetary resources.
According to sources, housing and urban affairs ministry require about Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 crore to meet the requirement of the current financial year. So, in order to keep them away from the financial crunch, rest of the amount will be raised from extra-budgetary support such as HUDCO or National Small Savings Fund (NSSF), which has deposits of about Rs 1.2 lakh crore.
While the urban component of PMAY is in 4,320 cities and towns, housing ministry has already approved 39.25 lakh houses under the affordable housing scheme till now.