At Rs 200K, Centre to provide 67% more to build rural homes in plains

Budget documents also showed that for houses that will be being built in hilly and north-eastern states, the per unit allocation has now been enhanced to Rs 220,000 as against the earlier Rs 130,000

The Centre will provide Rs 200,000 for each rural house built in the plains under its flagship rural housing scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Grameen (PMAY-G), from FY25 as against the earlier Rs 1,20,000, an increase of almost 67 per cent.

The enhanced allocation will be for the additional 20 million rural houses promised to be built over the next five years starting FY25 in addition to the almost 30 million houses already built, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in the Budget speech.

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The Budget documents also showed that for houses that will be built in hilly and north-eastern states, the per unit allocation had now been enhanced to Rs 220,000 as against the earlier Rs 1,30,000, an increase of 69 per cent. Raising the per unit allocation under PMAY-G has been a long standing demand in view of rising cost of materials such as cement and bricks. Meanwhile, the documents showed a tentative financial provision of around Rs 4,18,200 crore at the rate of Rs 2,05,000 per unit on the estimated financial requirement to build the additional houses for the next five years. 

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The Centre's share will be 63 per cent of this, which is around Rs 2,63,466 crore and the rest will be borne by states. The Centre also said that under the Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM - JANMAN), which is scheme for the development and welfare of most vulnerable sections among tribal people starting FY24, a dedicated provision has been made of Rs 630 crore in RE FY24 and Rs 3434.96 crore in BE Rs 25 as the central share of funds for effective implementation of PM- JANMAN under the rural housing scheme.

Since FY15, the Narendra Modi government has targeted to build around 29.5 million houses with the objective of providing ‘Housing for All.’ Of this, around 29.4 million houses have been allocated and around 25.4 million rural houses have already been built, Budget papers showed.