HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh on Tuesday said India should look to increase its mortgage-to-GDP ratio from the current 9 per cent to 15 per cent over the next five to seven years.
There is need to increase the housing stock in the country by building new houses, rather than resorting to trading in home loan portfolios between banks or housing finance companies, Parekh said at an HDFC event to launch a special report on Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (urban)-Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme.
Parekh said the housing finance regulator National Housing Bank should look into this common practice of trading in home loan portfolio and decide whether such a trend should be encouraged in India or not.
“Our primary focus should be to support first-time home buyers. There is a difference between home loans and loans against property. Need of the hour is to have more home loans and not loans against property,” Parekh said.
NHB Managing Director Chief Executive Officer Sriram Kalyanaram later told BusinessLine that NHB will look into the issue raised by Parekh as regards home loan portfolios.
The HDFC’s special report was released by Shiv Pratap Shukla, Minister of State for Finance, in the Capital.
Parekh said that total 14,290 borrowers of HDFC across the country have benefitted from the PMAY (urban)-CLSS with total subsidy of ₹302 crore.
Beneficiaries waiting
Renu Sud Karnad, Managing Director, HDFC, said another 14,000 beneficiaries are in the pipeline for availing the benefits of PMAY (urban) –CLSS scheme.
Asked about the status of the HDFC’s $1-billion Affordable Housing Fund, she said that as much as $350 million has already been deployed towards this segment.