Cabinet to clear biggest financing plan for PMAY-Urban

The Cabinet is set to approve the biggest ever financing plan for the PM Awas Yojna (PMAY) on Tuesday to meet the fund requirement for building 1.2 crore affordable houses in urban areas. Sources said the Centre's share for building houses under this scheme in the next two financial years was estimated at around Rs 60,000 crore.

TOI has learnt that this amount will be raised from non-budgetary resources, meaning the housing ministry will borrow it from fund-raising entities such as HUDCO or tap the National Small Savings Fund(NSSF), which has deposits of about Rs 1.2 lakh crore.

Sources said the housing and urban affairs ministry requires about Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 crore to meet the requirement of the current financial year.

The Budget proposal provides for raising Rs 25,000 crore from extra-budgetary support for 2018-19 and the similar amount will be required for 2019-20 to ensure there is no fund crunch.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech, had announced to establish Affordable Housing Fund, which will be anchored in the National Housing Bank (NHB) to raise Rs 25,000 crore from nonbudgetary resources. The urban component of PMAY is in 4,320 cities and towns. Housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri had recently said,

So far, the housing ministry has approved 39.25 lakh houses under the housing scheme.