By Dominick Rodrigues
Mumbai : Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday handed over possession to homebuyers virtually, even as the Government of India’s Special Window for Affordable & Mid-Income Housing (SWAMIH) completed its first residential project.
The residential project – Rivali Park, located in suburban Mumbai — was the first housing project in India to have received funding under the SWAMIH Fund, which was launched by Nirmala Sitharaman in November 2019.
Rivali Park Wintergreens — the first investment by the Fund and also the first project to get completed — is a large project spread over 7 acres consisting of 708 units of various configurations, and developed by CCI Projects Pvt Ltd (CCIPPL), an associate company of Cable Corporation of India Ltd.
Describing the project as an important achievement since the SWAMIH Fund has worked its way through the difficult period of COVID-19 pandemic, the Finance Minister said the Government of India had stepped in to provide funding to the stressed affordable and mid-income housing projects thereby giving relief to the home buyers who had invested their hard earned savings.
Highlighting the Government’s belief that completion of these homes will release a large amount of capital that is locked up in these projects, the Finance Minister said it will provide employment to construction workers and also give impetus to allied industries like steel and cement, besides improving portfolios of Banks and NBFCs alongside significantly improving the economic sentiment in the nation.
Sitharaman also complimented and congratulated the SBICap Ventures team for converting a policy announcement into an on-the-ground funding institution that has achieved significant progress within a short time span.
Besides Sitharaman, the online event included Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs; Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs; Ajay Seth, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance; K. Rajaraman, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance; Dinesh Kumar Khara, Chairman, SBI, and other officials from SBICAP Ventures Limited.
Noting that the real estate industry is the second-largest employment generation sector in India, Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), said that MoHUA has taken several steps in the past few years to ensure that the real estate sector not only survives the cycles but thrives through RERA, lowering GST rates, PMAY scheme etc. MoHUA shared the vision of Ministry of Finance in this last-mile funding endeavour to complete the projects, he added.
Expressing the SBI Group’s total commitment in line with the Government’s vision to revive the real estate sector and provide relief to homebuyers, Dinesh Kumar Khara (Chairman-SBI) said that the Fund is being managed tirelessly to achieve the huge expectations that have been laid out before SBI and partners. The last 15 months had witnessed SBI making significant progress in increasing scale of operations to a level that is generally achieved in 3 to 4 years by other private equity funds, he said.
In barely 1.5 years since inception, the SWAMIH Investment Fund I today is one of the largest private equity teams in India and has done commendable work despite COVID-19 related restrictions. The Fund so far has given its final approval to 72 projects for completing 44,100 homes, while 132 projects have received preliminary approval to complete an additional 72,500 homes. Thus, the Fund is targeting to complete an aggregate of 1,16,600 homes. This Fund is bridging the trust deficit between home buyers and developers by completing construction and delivering homes without depending on any other source of finance.
