The SAP has suggested construction of seven lakh additional dwelling units annually starting from the second year of the Ninth Plan.

The Ninth Plan document which was likely to be approved by the National Development Council (NDC) later in the month, has estimated that Rs 4000 crore would be require annually for constructing seven lakh units. This comprises institutional finances of the order of Rs 2,800 crore including equity support to be provided to HUDCO through central budget, Rs 1,200 crore as subsidy from the central/state governments and beneficiary contribution in cash, kind and labour.

Assuming that physical output of formal sector institutions in the implementation of SAP would be commensurate with the investment requirement of 70 per cent, the target forformal sector financial institutions would be 4.9 dwelling units annually and the balance 2.1 lakh units would be provided by beneficiary contribution and subsidy.

The Ninth Plan points out that out of formal sector institutions, HUDCO is expected to build one-third of the total target namely 2.33 lakh dwelling units annually. However, since there is a likely delay in the implementation of the SAP as HUDCO is currently engaged with the task of providing roughly one lakh dwelling units annually through ongoing schemes, the additional target for HUDCO has been kept at a reduced level of 1.5 lakh dwelling units for 1998-99 instead of 2.33 lakh originally proposed.

The shortfall in the current year (0.83 lakh dwelling units), the Plan panel suggests, may be undertaken by other formal sector institutions. During the remaining years of the Ninth Plan (1999-2002), HUDCO may take up one-third of the shortfall in 1998-99 over and above the original target of 2.33 lakh dwelling units.

The Ninth Plan has furthersuggested that as an incentive for taking up the additional targets in the formal sector through the various activities/programmes, a corpus of approximately Rs 100 crore be set up for leveraging additional resources for meeting the requirement of funds for housing the deprived sections of the society.

With regard to rural housing, the Plan panel has pegged the requirement of Rs 8790 crore from the central budget as DBS (domestic budgetary support). Under the SAP for rural housing, 13 lakh new houses are required to be set up annually in the rural areas in addition to the existing 12.3 lakh units per year. The total houses to be constructed annually would increase commensurately to 25.30 lakhs.

Based on the earlier Plan estimates, it was projected that approximately 61.50 lakh houses will be added to the overall housing stock during the Ninth Plan period with an outlay of Rs 6000 crore as DBS. In addition, from the Additional Central Assistance (ACA) for BMS which includes rural housing as one of theseven components, it was estimated that at least 1.70 lakh additional housing units would be constructed annually from 1998-99 to 2001-2. Therefore, a total of 68.30 lakh units of rural houses were to be constructed as per the earlier Plan projections.