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Company News
New policy to accord industry status to housing
Thursday - 29th December, 2011 | www.myrepublica.com |
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Recognizing housing sector as an industry, the government is coming up with a new National Housing Policy, outlining the priorities, which among others include development of organized urban settlement by increasing the poor’s access home loans to purchase land and house.
The Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MoPPW), which approved the new policy, has recently sent the policy papers to the Cabinet for endorsement.
In a bid to manage urban settlement, the policy, an amendment to National Housing Policy 1996, has put housing into four categories - permanent resident with complete ownership of consumer, collective housing with joint ownership of two or more consumers, mixed-housing that also provides non-resident activities, rented housing and temporary housing, which is meant for the people affected by natural disaster or conflicts.
Amid limited access of the poor to the housing credit, the policy envisages a Housing Development Fund to simplify the process of providing loan for the purchase of land and houses. “This proposed new policy is aimed at managing urban housing and increasing the poor’s access to housing through prudent use of land,” Tulasi Prasad Sitaula, secretary at the MoPPW, told Republica.
The policy has assigned town development fund and other agencies working in the urban development sector to formulate the national housing investment policy by studying concessional loan, subsidy, and financial feasibility of housing.
Similarly, the policy has also stressed on providing concessional loans and subsidy to low-income groups to buy house and land in collaboration with national and international financial institutions as well as savings and credit cooperatives involved in the sector and subsidy on infrastructure development in land development programs.
Department of Urban Development and Housing Construction will undertake management and monitoring of the process of setting up housing cooperatives to distribute land at cost price and concessional loan to limited income groups.
Similarly, the policy envisages to set up housing cooperatives to provide loans to those having no permanent income to buy land, building materials, and housing against collective collateral. Banks and financial institutions will be encouraged to extend access of loan for all sections of people for housing and purchase of land.
In an effort to manage and boost the housing sector in urban and sub-urban areas, the policy has identified the need to simplify the process of land acquisition, launch land development programs with the involvement of private sector to increase the supply of land to those who want to build houses, encourage the housing developers to operate outside the capital and encourage collective housing and mixed housing in urban areas. Similarly, responding to the long-standing demands from housing developers, the policy has identified housing business as an industry and proposed facilities and concessions accordingly.
Keeping in view the haphazard human settlement destroying fertile land, the policy encourages housings development in the areas as classified in recently introduced National Land-use Policy.
The policy has proposed the mandatory provision to arrange open space in the housing area to ensure safety, encourage rehabilitation of old and insecure houses, formulate contingency plan for temporary housing for affected people from natural disaster and providing small plots to poor settlers residing in encroached government land and rented single room as well as residing in a single room in urban areas, to build low-cost houses. |
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