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National Urban Housing Fund (NUHF) Details, Features, Benefits
Union Cabinet Approved Creation of NUHF For Housing Schemes- Details, Features, Benefits
The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had the creation of Rs 60,000 crores of National Urban Housing Fund (NUHF) to finance the government’s Housing for all programme, on 20th February 2018.
The cabinet approval was made with an aim to build 12 million affordable housing units in urban areas by 2022.
The introduced fund will be placed under the supervision of the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs, whose initial task is the mainstreaming of new construction technologies.
The introduced fund will be elevated from non-budgetary sources and can be utilized into existing government enterprises such as the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (Hudco).
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley earlier had proposed the creation of such fund in budget-2018, which proposed to build 3.7 million houses in urban areas and 5.1 million in rural areas by 2018-19.
Now the budget proposes to raise Rs25,000 crores as extra-budgetary support in order to finance housing programmes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). The urban component of scheme targets more than 4,300 cities and towns.
The introduced fund is believed to raise the required funds as per the requirement for the next four years to meet budgetary shortfalls. The projected overall funding envisaged by the government is around Rs1.7 lakh crores.
As per officials, out of the proposed 12 million houses, about 0.5 million have been completed and a further 1.7 million houses have been launched. Apart from this direct support for house construction, more than 87,000 interest subsidy applications for housing loans have been sanctioned and another 40,000 are currently being processed.
Under the PMAY scheme, each beneficiary will get financial assistance worth Rs1.5 lakhs to support the construction of an affordable housing unit.
