TEHRAN - Iran’s Constitutional Council, a body tasked with finalizing parliament legislation, has approved a massive housing scheme which seeks to build six million homes for the underprivileged population in the country.
Constitutional Council spokesman Hadi Tahan Nazif said that the Council had voted for the Leap in Housebuilding Motion put forward by the parliament in July.
Tahan Nazif said in a tweet that the motion, which had been rejected in a first debate earlier this month, passed the Council after it was modified by the parliament.
The motion seeks to give the Iranian administration resources needed to build six million affordable houses in Iran.
It comes in line with promises by Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi to build four million houses until the end of his term in 2025.
The parliament motion stipulates that the government should provide 60% of the funds needed to build a housing unit while offering cheap loans and empty plots of lands to builders and developers.
CEO of Iran’s Housing Bank, which is known locally as Bank Maskan, said on Saturday that the target set by Raisi for building one million affordable houses per year was “realistic”.
Mahmoud Shayan said that Iran’s budget law for the year to March 2021 obliges the banking system in the country to provide 3,600 trillion rials ($12.85 billion) in cheap loans to help meet a target of building 1.2 million houses over the fiscal period.
“If the banks avoid increasing the share of housing loans from their credits, they will be forced to pay more taxes for their increased deposits in the central bank,” said Shayan.