The National Housing Bank (NHB) is set to achieve a milestone of covering two lakh households till date under the Credit-Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, a top official said.

The total subsidy outgo channelised through NHB, which is the central nodal agency of CLSS for these households till date, stood at about ₹4,300 crore, Sriram Kalyanaraman, Managing Director & CEO, told BusinessLine .

Asked what NHB’s aspirations for CLSS would be in the current financial year, Kalyanaraman said that NHB was looking to double the number of units covered for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) from 83,000 units in 2017-18.

For the Middle Income Group (MIG) category, NHB has set its sights on tripling the coverage in 2018-19 from 21,000 units in 2017-18, he said. In yet another significant achievement, NHB’s gross non-performing assets (mainly from project finance) is now moving towards the ‘nil’ level, with the data for 2017-18 coming in at ₹4.63 crore.

The GNPA levels have been sharply coming down in the last four years, official data showed. In 2014-15, the GNPA level stood at ₹224 crore. This reduced to ₹51 crore in 2015-16 and₹34 crore in 2016-17.

This is significant if one were to consider the total fund exposure outstanding of NHB being as high as ₹58,000 crore.

NHB’s board has now given its nod for the launch of a new guarantee product (credit enhancement), which is expected to help small- and medium-sized housing finance companies to raise resources at lower cost.

Kalyanaraman said that NHB will, through this product, guarantee as much as 30 per cent of the bonds being raised by HFCs with a credit rating of BBB or above. “This product will go live shortly,” he said.

Housing rental index

NHB plans to come up with a novel ‘Housing Rental Index’, which will initally cover 31 cities. The movement of house rents in these 31 cities will be covered in this index, said Kalyanaraman. Indications are that the year 2017-18 will be used as the base year.

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