The budget outlay for the Centre’s flagship affordable rural housing scheme –Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana- Gramin (PMAY-G) – may be around Rs 35,000 crore, much lower than the Budget Estimate of Rs 54,500 crore for the current fiscal year, official sources said.
The actual spending on PMAY-G in FY25 may fall short of the budget target by at least Rs 20,000 crore, as financial assistance for the second phase of the programme will likely commence only next financial year, the sources added. The expenditure on the scheme was Rs 32,000 crore in FY24.
The lower outlay for next fiscal takes into consideration the absorptive capacity of the scheme.
For PMAY-G 2.0, the Centre had announced that 20 million houses will be built with a total outlay of Rs 3.06 lakh crore for FY24-25 to FY28-29 including central share of Rs 2.05 lakh crore and states’ contribution of Rs 1 lakh crore.
For PMAY-G 2.0, financial assistance is to be provided for the construction houses at existing unit assistance of Rs 1.20 lakh in plain areas and Rs 1.3 lakh in North Eastern Region States and Hill States of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
The survey to identify eligible households in the second phase has just begun and the process will continue till March 2025 and actual disbursements are likely to begin in the next financial year.
In the new scheme, the Centre has for the first time allowed people also to self-register for the scheme without going through the usual Panchayat mechanism to address issues of discrimination. In the current financial year, the Centre’s spending in PMAY-G is largely on account of the remaining 3.5 million houses not completed till March 31, 2024, the terminal year of the previous version of PMAY-G. The government had set a target to build 29.5 million houses in the previous phase after the scheme which commenced in 2016.
Most of the spending this year is on account of the completion of the remaining houses allocated in the previous phase as well as houses under the Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM JANMAN), sources said.
Under PM JANMAN, 2 million pucca houses will be built in five years beginning FY25 with financial assistance of Rs 2.39 lakh/unit.
The government has said that the continuation of the scheme beyond March 2026 would be after the evaluation of the PMAY-G by the NITI Aayog and re-appraisal of the scheme by the expenditure finance committee.