Only 2.4% of the social housing plan for 2024 has been achieved: What solutions does the Ministry of Construction propose?

However, statistics show that only 8 projects have been completed with a scale of 3,136 apartments, reaching 2.4% of the plan.

To achieve the goal, according to the Ministry of Construction, in addition to focusing on removing obstacles, especially legal and procedural ones, to speed up the licensing and project implementation process, state-owned commercial banks also need to research credit packages for social housing buyers with loan terms of 10 to 15 years and preferential interest rates 3-5% lower than normal commercial loans.

In the first 6 months of 2024 alone, the country has 8 completed social housing projects with a scale of 3,136 units. In addition, there are 5 projects that have been licensed and started construction, with a scale of 8,468 units; 9 projects have investment policies, with a scale of 8,795 units.

However, according to the Project “Investing in the construction of at least 1 million social housing apartments for low-income people and industrial park workers,” in 2024, the country aims to complete 130,000 social housing units. Thus, nearly 100,000 apartments will have to be completed this year.

Regarding the implementation of the 120,000 billion VND credit package, in addition to 4 banks (BIDV, Vietinbank, Agribank, Vietcombank), currently Tien Phong Bank (TPbank) and VPBank have registered to participate in the program with the registered amount of each bank being 5,000 billion VND.

“To date, commercial banks have disbursed VND1,234 billion, including VND1,202 billion for investors in 12 projects; VND32 billion for home buyers in 5 projects,” a representative of the Ministry of Construction informed.

Based on the above-mentioned implementation of social housing, some experts believe that the progress of building 130,000 social housing units in 2024 is still very slow, and if not accelerated, it will be difficult to achieve the target.

Regarding solutions, the representative of the Ministry of Construction emphasized that with the 3 laws (Land Law 2024, Real Estate Business Law 2023 and Housing Law 2023) taking effect from August 1, in the coming time, social housing investors will enjoy more preferential regulations such as regulations on determining and calculating the purchase and sale prices of social housing.

In that spirit, a representative of the Ministry of Construction said that this agency recommends that ministries, branches and localities urgently concretize and put into practice the laws and resolutions passed by the National Assembly at the 7th Session (such as the 2024 Land Law, the 2023 Real Estate Business Law and the 2023 Housing Law...).

For its part, the Ministry of Construction will strengthen coordination with relevant agencies to organize the implementation, monitor, inspect, and urge the implementation of Directive 34/CT-TW dated May 24, 2024 of the Secretariat on strengthening the Party's leadership over social housing development in the new situation.

In particular, the Ministry of Construction requested the State Bank of Vietnam to continue to effectively implement appropriate solutions to reduce lending interest rates in conjunction with increasing access to credit capital to support people and businesses; focus on directing large state-owned commercial banks to research, develop and provide credit packages for social housing buyers with loan terms of 10 to 15 years; preferential interest rates 3-5% lower than normal commercial loans so that low-income people and industrial park workers have the opportunity and motivation to buy houses.

For localities, the Ministry of Construction recommends that the People's Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities have specific solutions, study and shorten investment procedures to speed up the implementation of social housing projects, avoid wasting clean land funds; thoroughly resolve problems related to procedures, planning, investor selection, infrastructure investment around the projects...