Union Minister for Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu said today that the major thrust of the Union Budget, presented yesterday in the Parliament was providing affordable housing. He said in Hyderabad that with affordable housing getting infrastructure status, it encourages builders by making them available low interest and long term finances, ultimately benefiting the buyers with reduced cost of houses.

Infrastructure status makes lending institutions look positively at housing loans as it reduced the risk weightage of such loans.’Large public sector investors like Employee Provident Fund Organisation and Insurance Firms will now invest in housing as they are mandated to invest specified portion of their funds in infrastructure projects, he added.

He also hopeful that various other incentives announced in the Budget for next fiscal will incentivise producers in the form of low interest loans, tax benefits etc., besides increased availability of resources to housing sector which will increase the options of owning a house and thereby making the house buyer the king.

He asserted that with substantially increased thrust on housing by the Government, the housing boom will return further to large scale interventions both on supply and demand side.

He recalled that Government is providing central assistance in the range of Rs.1 lakh to Rs.2.30 lakh per beneficiary belonging to Economically Weaker Sections, Low Income Groups and Middle Income Groups with incomes of up to Rs. 18 lakh per year under Prime Ministers Awas Yojana(Urban) and similar support for housing in rural areas.

He also said that under PMAY(Urban), 15.61 lakh affordable houses have been sanctioned in urban areas with an investment of Rs.84,150 cr with central assistance of Rs.24,670 cr. Of these, construction of 4.32 lakh houses has begun and tenders are being called for construction of another 8.50lakh houses.