Funding a key challenge to achieve PMAY targets: ICRA

Credit rating agency ICRA has said that physical progress both for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban and PMAY-Grameen has been slow in the context of the stated targets and funding is a key challenge to achieve the flagship programme’s targets.The cumulative assistance necessary under the PMAY-U and PMAY-G, to achieve the stated targets, far exceeds the current annual outlay on these programmes. The current year’s allocation, when released, will be enough to achieve completion of ~7.7 million pending housing units, out of the total sanctioned 9.6 million units. ICRA estimates Rs 5.15 lakh crore of cumulative assistance would be necessary to achieve the construction of the balance 40 million units by the financial year 2022. Thus, funding is viewed as a key challenge by ICRA in achieving the PMAY targets, it says. Regarding progress under PMAY, the progress under the PMAY-U, launched in June 2015, has been modest in terms of houses completed. As against close to 3.6 million housing units which have been approved since FY2016, till date, only around 0.3 million units have been completed. Under the PMAY-G too, the number of houses sanctioned under the scheme as on January 15, 2018, stands at 6.0 million units with the completion at 1.6 million units. Thus, a significant pick-up in implementation pace for both, the PMAY-U and the PMAY-G, will be required to achieve the Housing for All target by 2022.