Rouhani slams former president’s housing scheme

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 9

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has criticized a housing project launched under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's term.

Speaking about the "Mehr" housing scheme proposed and launched during Ahmadinejad's term in office, Rouhani criticized the scheme for failing to consider urban planning fundamentals, IRNA news agency reported.

"Providing housing for people in the urban or suburbs areas is different from the "Mehr" housing projects which were located in the deserts," IRNA news agency quoted Rouhani as saying at a meeting with the board members of the Housing Foundation of Islamic Revolution.

Elaborating on the administration's plans for providing youth with housing, the president said that his government is planning to establish deposit accounts for youth at the country's Bank Maskan (the Housing Bank) which will give the youth chances to receive mortgages for buying houses.

The "Mehr" housing scheme envisaged building 50,000 units per year for low-income people.

In November 2013, Iranian transport minister Abbas Akhoundi said that more than 10 trillion rials (about $300 million) has been allocated to complete the semi-finished residential units under the Mehr Housing Project in Iran.

Under the "Mehr" plan, real estate developers are offered free parcels of land in return for building cheap, residential units for first-time buyers, who receive 99-year mortgages for the purchase of the land.

The inflation rate in Iran in 2005, when Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the government was about 10.4 percent, but in mid-2013, when Ahmadinejd handed over the office to Rouhani, the inflation rate and point-to-point inflation rate were 37.5 percent and 44 percent, respectively.