Centre Sanctions ₹ 8,700 Crore to Construct 60,000 Houses- SWAMIH

The Union Ministry of Finance has sanctioned over Rs 8,700 crore under a special scheme, ‘SWAMIH’ to ensure completion of about 60,000 houses.

The Special Window for Affordable and Mid Income Housing scheme (SWAMIH) aims to complete construction of stalled, brownfield, RERA-registered residential developments that are in affordable housing/mid-income category.

Conditions are such that projects should be net worth positive and require last mile funding to complete construction. There is a fund to assist this scheme which started with target corpus of Rs 12,500 crore with a green shoe option of Rs 12,500 crore.

Union Finance Minister Niramla Sitharaman reviewed the performance of this scheme with government officials and senior management team of the State Bank of India, SBI Capital Markets and SBICAPS Ventures (SVL). The fund has so far approved 81 projects with an investment of Rs 8,767 crore.

These projects are spread across a mix of markets including large citiesThese projects are spread across a mix of markets including large cities such as the National Capital Region, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and also Tier-II locations including Karnal, Panipat, Lucknow, Surat, Dehradun, Kota, Nagpur, Jaipur, Nashik, Vizag, Chandigarh, etc. Amongst these projects, investments in 18 projects have been given final clearance and disbursement is at various stages across seven residential projects.

Applications from 353 stressed projects are under examination for provision of assistance. It was also highlighted that activation of these construction sites by special window will provide employment opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled labourers.

Additionally, the fund is actively evaluating options to provide relief to 15,000 homebuyers in certain long-stalled projects which are pending before the Supreme Court for resolution.

The recent initiative by the fund to reduce the cost of capital to 12 percent has resulted in an increase in the number of projects that meet the funding criteria laid out under special window.

Source: Construction week online

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