Nation urged to draft housing strategy

Laws - Viet Nam needs to draft a national plan on residential housing until 2020 with a vision to 2030, heard a meeting held in Ha Noi last Friday.

The meeting, chaired by deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai and the steering committee of housing and real estate policies, aims to collect information and ideas on how to draft the plan.

Under the plan, issues related to policies of planning for housing, land, finance, credit, and application of new technologies and building materials will be included.

According to research on population and housing, the number of houses in the country has increased during the last decade.

The number of households, most of whom own a house, surged from 16,661,366 to 22,198,922 over the last decade.

Total area of houses and apartments has soared by 706 million square metres, bringing the total area of housing in the country to 1,415 million square metres.

At present, only 0.05 per cent of households do not own a house or apartment.

The average area of housing per person has increased from 9.7 sq.m per person to 16.7 sq.m per person.

The number of apartments with area of at least 60 sq.m has surged by 51 per cent.

However, the development and management of the housing market has faced difficulties, especially inconsistent policies.

Many regulations about the housing market are not feasible, failing to control the imbalance of housing supply and demand.

In addition, the administrative procedures for housing are still complicated and cumbersome.

The draft plan will be submitted to the Government for approval within this month.