Minister of Housing and Settlements Pushes for Breakthrough in Subsidised Apartment Financing

In the past five years, the realisation of apartment buildings has remained around 140 units, while subsidised landed houses reached 278,000 units last year. Jakarta (ANTARA) - Minister of Housing and Settlements (PKP) Maruarar Sirait (Ara) is pushing for breakthroughs in financing subsidised apartments or rusun. She stated that the government is preparing a new financing scheme for apartments this year. This is an important step considering that the realisation of apartment construction in recent years has still been relatively limited compared to the existing needs. “In the past five years, the realisation of apartments has still been around 140 units, while subsidised landed houses last year reached 278,000 units. Moving forward, we are pushing for financing breakthroughs, both for apartments and subsidised landed houses, so that the programme achievements can increase further, including higher targets next year,” said Ara in her statement in Jakarta on Monday. She appreciated the performance of BP Tapera, which has shown positive progress in promoting the housing finance sector. “Tapera is very good. This is the result of the hard work of Mr Heru and the entire team,” she said. In addition, Ara emphasised that the achievement of subsidised landed house construction shows a positive trend, with realisations reaching hundreds of thousands of units in the previous year. Moving forward, strengthening the financing scheme is expected to further accelerate the provision of decent housing for the community. The Ministry of PKP affirmed its commitment to continue strengthening housing finance schemes and improving the quality of community housing through targeted, adaptive, and sustainable programmes. Ara stated that before signing the policy, the government actively absorbed input from various stakeholders, from the community, banks, developers, contractors, to institutions such as Danantara and the Presidential Staff Office (KSP). In the policy draft, the government ensures several important breakthroughs to facilitate public access to subsidised vertical housing. One of the main points is the certainty of financing tenor up to 30 years with an interest rate targeted at 6 percent. Not only from the financing side, the government is also introducing innovations in design and housing feasibility aspects. The size of subsidised apartment units will be expanded to a maximum of 45 square metres, from the previous range of 21 to 36 square metres. With this scheme, apartment units are possible to have two to three bedrooms, making them more suitable for families. Ara also emphasised the importance of directly listening to the voices of apartment residents, especially regarding management costs such as Environmental Management Fees (IPL), electricity and water tariffs. She also received various proposals from banks regarding follow-up schemes such as rent to own and the development of a secondary market for subsidised apartments to expand housing ownership access for the community.