Govt to unveil new sops for urban housing

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : Centre will unveil a new interest subvention scheme for urban housing in September, union minister for housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said. Addressing a press conference, Puri said the scheme is almost ready. “We are fleshing out the details of the scheme and then it will be in public.

We are almost ready. The scheme will be announced in full details in September," Puri said. The statement comes after prime minister Narendra Modi announced in his Independence day speech that the government would come up with a scheme to provide relief in home loans to the urban lower- and middle-class population.

The new scheme will “benefit families living in cities but living in rented houses, slums, or chawls and unauthorized colonies. If they want to build their own houses, we will assist them with relief in interest rates and loans from banks that will help them save lakhs of rupees," Modi said. The upcoming scheme would be in line with the credit-linked subsidy scheme (CLSS) for economically weaker sections (EWS) or lower income group (LIG) which ended in March 2022.

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), which has other verticals apart from CLSS, including in-situ slum redevelopment, beneficiary-Led construction (BLC), and affordable housing in partnership, ends in December 2024. The scheme was extended to complete the houses sanctioned before 31 March, 2022. Under CLSS, the government used to provide benefit of up to ₹2.67 lakh each through an interest subsidy of 3-6.5%.