SWAMIH fund approves Rs 8,767 cr for 81 stalled housing projects

New Delhi, July 23 The Special Window for Affordable and Mid Income Housing (SWAMIH) fund announced by the government last year has so far approved the sanction of Rs 8,767 crore for the completion of 81 stalled projects.

The fund with a total corpus of Rs 25,000 crore was created last year to help last mile funding of stalled housing projects, with the government infusing Rs 10,000 crore.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday held a review meeting on the progress of the implementation of the fund.

An official statement said that the approved amount will help the completion of almost 60,000 housing units across the country.

These projects are spread across several markets, including large cities such as NCR, MMR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and also Tier-2 locations, including Karnal, Panipat, Lucknow, Surat, Dehradun, Kota, Nagpur, Jaipur, Nashik, Vizag and Chandigarh, among other cities.

Among these projects, investments in 18 projects have been given final clearance and the disbursement is at various stages across seven residential projects.

Applications from 353 stressed projects are under examination for provision of assistance. Activation of these construction sites by the special window would provide employment opportunities to various skilled and semi-skilled labourers, the Finance Ministry statement said.

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 per cent has resulted in an increase in the number of projects that meet the funding criteria laid out under the special window," it said.

While acknowledging the steps taken by the special window to expedite participation from the existing lenders, Sitharaman suggested that both private and public banks, NBFCs and HFCs should see the special window as a stakeholder and increase support for early completion of the stressed projects.

During the review meeting, the Finance Minister asked the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) to closely monitor the performance of the SWAMIH Investment Fund in order to ensure that the capital raised by the fund is rapidly committed towards resolving the stressed projects and remove any impediments that could arise in this process.

The statement said that Sitharaman also wanted speedy efforts to complete the construction of projects for which last mile funding has been sanctioned.

( With inputs from IANS )