Story by Amanda Khong
A WORKSHOP between the banks and Penang State Government will be arranged to find ways to narrow the gap between the total of housing loan applicants and it’s rejection rate.
Exco member for Town and Country Planning and Housing, Jagdeep Singh Deo held a press conference on Nov 4 in Komtar to adress this matter.
Jagdeep met up with Bank Negara Malaysia’s Assistant Governor, Abu Hasan Alshari Yahaya on Nov 2 in Komtar to discuss about the request to consider introducing more flexible loan packages for those loan applicants for low cost housing, low-medium cost housing, and affordable housing.
“It was overall a positive meet-up for both sides. Honestly I would be happy to be able to reduce loan rejection rates by 10 to 20 percent,” said Jagdeep during the recent press conference.
Also brought up in the meeting were suggestions to reintroduce the Developer Interest Bearing Scheme (DIBS) especially for first time affordable home buyers and the Shared Ownership Scheme (SOS) which is a programme by the state government.
Bank Negara Malaysia welcomed the SOS suggestion and stated that they will consider the applicants with this scheme differently seeing how the state government will be responsible for a part of the loan.
After the meeting, it was agreed by both sides that although the loan approval criterias must be strictly complied but there were still rooms for cooperation between the state government and Bank Negara Malaysia to lessen the housing loan rejection rates.
Jagdeep added that he hopes for the workshop to be arranged as early as Dec which is probably right after the state legislative assembly.
These upcoming workshop will hope to see positive suggestions to help overcome these high housing loan rejection rates and that it will be able to see an evident reduction in the housing loan rejection rates.
} else {