Poor, middle-class to get interest relief on loan to build houses: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that the government would come out with a new scheme to help the poor and middle-class families living in cities to build their own houses.

“We are coming up with a new scheme in the coming years that will benefit those families that live in cities but are living in rented houses, or slums, or chawls and unauthorised colonies,” Modi said while addressing the nation on the 77th Independence Day.

The prime minister said that the government will provide interest relief on loans from banks that will help them save lakhs of rupees. “Earlier, Rs 90,000 crore were spent to build the houses of the poor; today it has increased four times, and more than Rs 4 trillion are being spent to build the houses of the poor.”

The government allocated Rs 79,000 crore in the union budget for FY24 for the Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY). Of this fund, around Rs 54,000 crore is meant for PMAY-Gramin, and about Rs 25,000 crore is dedicated to PMAY-Urban to meet expenditure under sanctioned projects.

The Cabinet has extended the continuation of PMAY-U up to December 31, 2024, with all the verticals except the Credit-Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) vertical.

Currently, there are four verticals under PMAY-U which include the credit-linked subsidy scheme (CLSS) for economically weaker section, lower income group, and middle-income group; affordable housing in partnership (AHP); in-situ slum redevelopment (ISSR); and beneficiary-led individual house construction (BLC).

The continuation of the scheme was based on the request of states/Union Territories (UTs) which will help in completion of already sanctioned houses under BLC, AHP, and ISSR verticals.

According to provisional data as of August 14, out of the 11.9 million sanctioned houses around 7.62 million houses have been completed under PMAY-U. The central government has committed Rs 2 trillion for the scheme, of which Rs 1.49 trillion has been released.

The Prime Minister mentioned that the schemes of the government have enabled 135 million people to break free from the chains of poverty in the first five years of his term. “The various schemes from housing schemes, providing Rs 50,000 crore to street vendors through the PM SVANidhi scheme, and many more have aided these 13.5 crore people to rise above the hardships of poverty,” he added.

Promising to make India one among the top three economies in his next term as the Prime Minister, Modi said when poverty reduces in the country, the power of the middle-class section of the country increases manifold. “Today the 135 million people who have come out of poverty have in a way become the middle class. When the purchasing power of the poor increases, the power of the middle class to carry out business grows too. When the purchasing power of the villages increases, the financial system of the town and city runs at a faster pace. And our economic cycle is interconnected. We want to move ahead by strengthening it,” he added.