Voters in Soc Trang province recommend that the Ministry of Construction advise the Government to issue more preferential policies to attract investors to participate, reduce the burden on the budget to promote the development of social housing for rent, rent-to-own, especially housing for workers and students.

HQC Plaza social housing project (Binh Chanh district, Ho Chi Minh City) Photo: Hoang Trieu

The Ministry of Construction said that recently, many mechanisms and policies to support the development of social housing have been issued and put into practice, creating a relatively complete legal corridor, ensuring support and encouragement for businesses to participate in the development of social housing. Specifically: Social housing projects are exempted from land use fees, 50% reduction in value added tax, corporate income tax, support for investment in technical infrastructure inside and outside the project, preferential loans with low interest rates...).

With the above preferential policies, the development of social housing has achieved some important results. Up to now, the whole country has completed 301 social housing projects in urban areas, with a construction scale of about 155,800 units, with a total area of ​​more than 7.78 million ^m2 .

Currently continuing to implement (including projects that have been approved for investment and are implementing investment construction) 401 projects, construction scale of about 454,360 units, total area of ​​about 22.72 million ^m2 , helping hundreds of thousands of low-income people, workers, and students to improve their housing, have safe accommodation.

However, the Ministry of Construction believes that the implementation process still has some difficulties and problems regarding policy mechanisms, preferential capital sources, profits, etc., which have not attracted many investors to participate in social housing development. These contents were also pointed out by the Prime Minister at the Conference on promoting the development of social housing for workers and low-income people on August 1, 2022. At this conference, the Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Construction to preside over the development of an Investment Project to build at least 1 million social housing apartments for low-income people and industrial park workers in the period of 2021-2030.

Up to now, the Ministry of Construction has completed the Project and submitted a report to the Prime Minister, proposing a number of solutions to perfect policies, allocate capital, increase incentives, and develop rental housing to remove difficulties and promote the development of social housing to achieve the set goals.

Currently, the Ministry of Construction is assigned to preside over, research, and amend the 2014 Housing Law to submit to the National Assembly for comments at the 5th session and approval at the 6th session. The Ministry of Construction would like to acknowledge the opinions of Soc Trang province voters to study in the process of amending and supplementing more preferential and open policies to attract investors to participate, reduce the burden on the budget to promote the development of social housing as recommended by Soc Trang province voters.