The Government Ensures Alignment To Low-Income Communities To Own A Home

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Deputy Minister of Finance (Wamenkeu) Suahasil Nazara said that the government has a high commitment to make it easier for people to own houses.

According to him, one of the focuses that the state is currently pursuing is to provide facilities for the lower middle class community so that they can get decent housing.

"I want to ensure that the housing sector will continue to be supported by the government, especially for low-income people," he said when he was a keynote speaker at the 2022 International Securitization Summit Seminar on Thursday, July 7.

To achieve this, the government then launched the People's Housing Savings (Tapera) program through housing funding liquidity facilities.

"The government also provides support through PT SMF (Means Multigriya Financial)," he said.

Suahasil also explained that if the state was present through the state-owned company PT Perumnas, which worked on the construction and housing sectors.

“There is a guard for the State Savings Bank (BTN) which works with a focus on supporting the property sector. I want these four government tools to synergize to support housing development targets as well as economic recovery measures in Indonesia," he stressed.

To note, the housing backlog has reached more than 12 million units per year. According to the government, this situation cannot be pursued quickly if it only relies on funding from the state budget.

Therefore, the new housing asset financing scheme, such as securitization, is considered to be able to provide its own solution to meet the high demand for housing every year.

Meanwhile, throughout the first semester of 2022, the government has disbursed housing subsidies worth Rp. 400 billion, equivalent to 7.1 percent of the ceiling of Presidential Decree No. 98 of 2022.

The subsidy was used to pay interest for the previous year's housing loan agreement, and the housing down payment assistance subsidy was used for 63,200 housing units, which are credit contracts for the 2022 period.