With an aim to strengthen the housing finance system at the local and State levels, a Regional Representative Office (RRO) of the National Housing Bank (NHB), the apex institution for housing finance in the country, was inaugurated here on Monday. This is the10th RRO of NHB.
Inaugurating the office, RBI Deputy Governor Harun R Khan said, “Housing has been contributing continuously over the years towards GDP (gross domestic product), and there has been a low mortgage penetration in India at 7 per cent of the GDP with scope for further improvement.”
Khan hoped that the NHB would continue its advocacy role in the State and be involved in dissemination of products like reverse mortgage loan (RMl), training programmes for the financial institutions and SlBC (State level Bankers’ Committee) meetings of the State and rural housing credit.
State Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary Injeti Srinivas called upon all stakeholders to insist on a focused approach for addressing the housing needs of the urban poor, whose population has considerably increased in the past few years due to large-scale urban migration.
He informed that a project on 100 acres of land identified land near Gothapatana on the Bhubaneswar outskirts for housing project for lower and lower middle class people would soon be executed.
“The Government has earmarked around 100 acres for low-cost housing projects, of which a few acres will be given to selected developers for coming up with their projects. The Government will undertake such a venture for economically weaker sections and lower income groups for the first time after it enunciated the Scheme for Affordable Urban Housing in Odisha-2012,” said Srinivas.
NHB Chairman and Managing Director RV Verma said the NHB is administering some Central Government schemes like Credit Risk Guarantee Fund Trust for low Income Housing and 37 Primary lending Institutions have entered into agreement with the trust which covers the risk of loans up to Rs 5 lakh. NHB is also administering the Rural Housing Fund which has received an allocation of Rs 6,000 crore in the budget of 2013-14.