Pakistan PM directs SBP, NBP to facilitate housing loan applicants

Prime Minister Imran Khan while taking notice of difficulties facing the applicants, instructed the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) to facilitate those applying for low-cost housing loan under Naya Pakistan Housing Programme.

Addressing the National Bank of Pakistan’s telethon on low cost housing loan, the prime minister asked the State Bank to instruct commercial banks to ease the loaning process for the applicants.

Imran Khan said that the NBP, being the premier bank of the country, should also instruct its staffers, to facilitate the loan applicants, observing that the bank employees were also not in habit of extending such easy loans to the cashless people. He said there was no such concept of housing loan for the poor people in the country, that was why the people were facing difficulties in the beginning.

The prime minister said that once the people started building their own house, the construction industry would boom to help boost allied 30 other industries.

Consequently, the wealth would create and increase revenue for the country besides creating jobs for the people, he added.

He said this was the first time in Pakistan that the salaried class or the people with no cash were getting opportunity to own a house.

Simultaneously aired on Pakistan Television and different private channels, the telethon was attended by Senator Shibli Faraz, Chairman of Naya Pakistan Housing and Development Authority Lt. General (Retd) Anwar Ali Hyder, State Bank Governor Raza Baqir, President of National Bank of Pakistan Arif Usmani and Executive Director SBP Samar Hasnain.

The prime minister joined the telethon telephonically for being in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 a week ago.

 Imran Khan said the programme had been designed in such a way that the beneficiaries currently giving money to pay house rent would be using the same to pay housing loan installment.

As per details, the beneficiaries of the housing loans would have to pay monthly installment of Rs6,600 for 1 million loan, Rs13,199 for two million, Rs19,799 for three million, Rs26,398 for four million, and Rs32,998 for five million loan.

The prime minister said the people across the world like Europe or USA bought their houses through bank loans but it had not been a practice in Pakistan.  He said under the programme, not only the people would own a house rather the national economy would also get a boost.

He said as the country was under debt burden, the wealth creation was direly needed to increase the revenue. “In all ways, this is an important project for the country,” the prime minister remarked.

To a question, the prime minister said the government would give preference to the widows and differently-abled person to give them houses under the programme for they being the government’s responsibility.

News Network International