NUR-SULTAN – Investment in Kazakhstan’s housing sector through the Nurly Zher housing programme increased 15.5 percent in the first six months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018, Kazakh Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development Roman Sklyar announced recently. Total investment through the programme through the end of June was 605.7 billion tenge (US$1.57 billion).
Photo credit: primeminister.kz.
The programme enables Kazakh citizens to purchase housing at favourable loan rates and offers opportunities for socially vulnerable groups to improve their housing conditions.
“We plan to build 118,000 houses in 2019 and, of those, 48,925 have been already built. To ensure timely commissioning of the housing, 81.7 billion tenge (US$212.5 million) are available to build the engineering utilities at the sites,” said the minister.
The country’s regions received 36.8 billion tenge (US$95.7 million) to build housing areas and 35.8 billion tenge (US$93.1 million) have been used, he added.
The Turkestan, Kyzylorda, Almaty and Kostanai Regions are the country’s leaders in housing construction.
“A total of 32.8 billion tenge (US$85.3 million) have been allocated for the construction and purchase of rental housing without redemption for people on the waiting list in the city akimats (local administrations). Of that, 14.9 billion tenge (US$38.7 million) have been received by the regions and 14.8 billion (US$38.4 million) have been used,” he said.
The constructed rental housing is provided for long-term rental without the right of redemption to socially vulnerable segments on the lists in the akimats in order of priority.
Low-income families can apply for preferential lending at a two percent annual rate given by Kazakhstan’s Housing Construction Saving Bank. The bank has received 50 billion tenge (US$130 million) for this purpose.
Sklyar said the plan is also to commission 6,000 apartments for citizens on the waiting list and, as of July, 924 apartments were commissioned.
Fifty billion tenge (US$130 million) will go to the construction and purchase of the leased housing for large families nationwide.
Sklyar said 1,000 leased apartments will be built annually in Nur-Sultan, Almaty and Shymkent, the country’s three largest cities, to ensure mobility for the country’s young working population.
The government is working to present the new Nurly Zher programme that will be in effect until 2025. The revised programme, which is expected to be adopted by the end of 2019, will take into account heating, water supply and wastewater disposal, communal sector modernisation and housing renovation.
