The Ministry of Construction has agreed with the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s proposal to offer preferential lending rates for homebuyers who borrow from the 120 trillion VND (4.72 billion USD) social housing credit package, at 3-5 percentage points lower than the average.

This aim is to create conditions for homebuyers to access the preferential loans in the context that the disbursement of the 120 trillion VND package remained stagnant, the construction ministry said at the Government’s monthly meeting on August 5.

To date, only a modest sum of 49 billion VND from the package has been disbursed to home buyers.

The SBV is drawing comments from ministries and agencies on the proposals of amendments to the credit package for social housing development.

Accordingly, the lending rate for homebuyers has been suggested at 3-5 percentage points lower than the average of the Big4 (BIDV, Vietinbank, Vietcombank and Agribank), while the rate for developers could be kept the same at 1.5-2 ppts lower.

To date, 34 out of 63 provinces and cities announced 78 projects which are eligible for borrowing from the package.

Banks have disbursed a total of over 1.34 trillion VND from the funding package, including nearly 1.3 trillion VND for developers of 12 projects and 49 billion VND for buyers at five projects./.VNA