Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that renewing stalled real estate projects will significantly improve economic sentiment in the country grappling with a second wave of Covid-19. She said this will also boost the portfolios of banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs). The Mumbai-based project, which had been stalled for some time, was completed under the Centre’s special liquidity window - Special Window for Affordable & Mid-Income Housing (SWAMIH-I). This is the first residential project completed by SWAMIH, which was created in 2019 to fund stuck affordable housing projects.
She mentioned ‘the government had stepped in to provide funding to the stressed affordable and mid-income housing projects, thereby giving relief to the home buyers who had invested their hard-earned savings. The government believes that once these homes are constructed and completed, a large amount of capital locked up in these projects will be released.’ It will generate employment for construction workers and will provide impetus to allied industries such as steel and cement. Further, it will improve the portfolios of banks and NBFCs and significantly boost the economic sentiment in the nation.
SWAMIH is a category-II alternative investment fund, announced by Finance Minister Sitharaman in September 2019 and approved by the Cabinet in November that year. It is currently the largest real estate private equity team in the country, having scaled up from a two-member team at the time of launch to 37 members now.