Imran directs banks to ease process for home loan applicants

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday, while taking notice of difficulties facing applicants of the low-cost housing loan under Naya Pakistan Housing programme, instructed the central bank and National Bank of Pakistan to facilitate make it easier on them.

Addressing the National Bank of Pakistan’s (NBP) telethon on low-cost housing loan, the Prime Minister asked the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to instruct commercial banks to ease the loaning process for the applicants. 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-Gen (retd) Anwar Ali Hyder, SBP Governor Reza Baqir, NBP President Arif Usmani and SBP Executive Director Samar Hasnain.

The Prime Minister joined the telethon via video link because he was quarantining after testing positive for Covid-19 a week ago. Khan said 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 loans for the poor of the country, the people were facing difficulties in the beginning. Khan said once the people started building their own houses, 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.

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 instalments.

The beneficiaries of the housing loans would have to pay monthly instalment of Rs6,600 for one million loan, Rs 13,199 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, 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, he said the government would give preference to widows and differently-abled people to give them houses under the programme for they were the government’s responsibility.

The people aspiring to own a house under the Prime Minister’s pro-poor housing programme, joined the transmission by calling a phone number and the panellists responded to their complaints. SBP Governor Reza Baqir said the banks had eased out the loaning conditions.

In order to facilitate the applicants, the SBP had standardised the list of documents required for housing loans.