Two months on, $5B social housing loan package remains untouched

The outdated criteria to determine who can buy social housing also make buying difficult, deputy head of the State Bank of Vietnam’s credit department for economic sectors, Nguyen Xuan Bac, said at a recent meeting.

The central bank has not received guidelines from the Ministry of Construction on which projects are considered social housing for it to lend from the package, he said.

"These are the main challenges that will hamper access to the ... package."

Changes to regulations on social housing investment are needed to boost supply, he said.

Localities need to earmark land lots and declare they would be used for social housing development, he added.

Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Sinh said 87 social housing projects have received construction permits and would soon be eligible for loans from the credit package.

The package was launched on April 1 to give both buyers and developers access to credit at interest rates 1.5-2 percentage points lower than the market average.

It will be available through this decade.