The Mera Pakistan Mera Ghar scheme was launched as a government markup subsidy scheme in October 2020. The objective of the subsidy was to increase housing finance loans amongst the lower-income strata to increase the rate of homeownership in Pakistan. There is no proper record of the exact number of houses built under the MPMG scheme. However, the SBP has measured the number of housing loans disbursed through commercial banks for homeownership. According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), commercial banks received house loan applications worth Rs 202 billion. Out of these, banks approved applications worth Rs 78 billion. Only housing loans worth Rs 18 billion have been disbursed as of 18th October 2021.
The gap between the number of loan applications and the actual disbursement of loans is justified by the follow-up, and other criteria banks have to meet before disbursing a loan. However, the gap between Rs 78 billion and Rs 18 billion is significant and shows the lack of commitment of commercial banks to the goal of increasing homeownership in the country. According to Governor SBP, banks have to accelerate the pace of approval and disbursement of housing finance loans so that people are not discouraged by the processing time.
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