NEW DELHI: India on Saturday announced a series of measures to revive the housing sector and boost exports as the government tries to kick-start an economy hit by a lending crisis and a slowdown in demand.

A fund worth 100 billion rupees ($1.41 billion) will be available to complete unfinished affordable and middle income housing projects, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. An equal amount of funding will come from the private sector or from a government insurance company, she added.

“The objective is to focus on construction of unfinished units,” Sitharaman told reporters in New Delhi.

The government will make offshore borrowing easier for affordable housing schemes, she said.

This was the third time in two months that India’s finance minister announced a raft of fiscal measures to boost demand at a time when economic growth has dropped to a six-year low.

However, some housing industry consultants said the fund, which excludes projects that are deemed non-performing assets or in bankruptcy proceedings, was too narrow in its scope.

“The stressed fund is not going to have a significant effect as not many projects are likely to qualify. I believe that from the roughly 5,000 projects that are stuck at that stage only 200-250 of them will make the cut,” said Pankaj Kapoor, chief executive of real estate rating and research firm Liases Foras.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2019