The ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA India) is planning to include affordable housing in the infrastructure list. This will enable the lower income groups to own cheaper houses.
Ajay Maken, MHUPA Minister, said that his ministry was seriously planning to initiate several steps to increase the number of affordable homes. The housing ministry has recently revised the income sealing. This was done with the view of improving the qualifying for various schemes of the ministry. The MHUPA ministry has also amended the limit of annual household income of the economically weaker section.
The revised income limit is Rs.1 lakh. The previous limit was Rs.60000. These are for the weaker income group. For the lower income group the amount was revised to Rs.2 lakh in place of earlier Rs.1.2 lakh limit.
MHUPA India Minister said that his ministry is thinking over the inclusion of affordable housing in the list of infrastructure. He was speaking at a convention organized by NREDC-(National Real Estate Development Council).
Basing on the reports he said that in India, 96% of total housing shortage is faced by the lower income groups. The figures showed that in India people lack 18.78 million houses.
Mr. Maken said that only a unified effort of the center, state and private sector alone can improve the situation. He urged the private sector to line up for sorting this shortage out. He revealed that banks are unable to provide loans or credits to weaker sections due to a various reasons.
MHUPA India head Mr. Maken added that by creating projects at larger quantity the builders can cut short the cost of production. He mentioned that real estate developers should construct affordable homes in large numbers.
He urged the real estate developers to create more affordable houses. He opined that his ministry also aims to bring appreciable transparency in real estate sector. He said the MHUPA ministry is planning of introducing a regulatory bill with this plan. However he added that the bill will be introduced only after acquiring feedback from various sectors.