On March 6, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed decrees aimed at improving approaches to housing construction and lending procedures. This was reported to BELTA by the press service of the Belarusian leader.
Decree No. 95 "On State Support for Housing Construction" has been adopted to create a unified regulatory document for providing state support to citizens in improving their housing conditions. It consolidates all existing forms of such support in the country.
The amounts of state support are set at the current level. The categories of persons eligible for it (all civilian and military personnel) and the procedures and conditions for its provision remain unchanged.
The decree provides for three forms of state support for housing construction or acquisition:
preferential loans for the construction of individual residential houses, apartments in semi-detached houses, as well as for the purchase of individual residential houses, apartments in apartment buildings or semi-detached houses built under state orders (21 categories of citizens);
one-off subsidies for housing construction or acquisition (17 categories of citizens);
state financial assistance in repaying debt on preferential loans (for large and young families, upon the birth of children).
Certain categories of citizens may be eligible for all forms of state support.
Among the main innovations of the decree are the exclusion of citizens from participation in shared construction and the provision of preferential loans only for the purchase of apartments in apartment buildings built under state orders (while for individual residential houses, lending for construction and purchase is maintained). In addition, subsidies for repaying debt and interest on commercial loans for housing construction are being replaced by preferential loans.
In settlements with a population of up to 20,000 people, preferential loans will be provided for the purchase of housing on both the primary market (built under state orders) and the secondary market.
Decree No. 94 presents a new version of Decree No. 215 of May 8, 2013, which introduced the mechanism of state orders for housing construction.
The essence of state order construction is that residential buildings are erected by state clients (housing construction departments and other state organizations) without involving citizens at the construction stage. A preferential loan for the construction of a residential building is provided to the client organization. After the building is commissioned and sale and purchase agreements are concluded with citizens, the preferential loan debt is reissued to the citizens.
The Decree provides for the possibility of constructing part of the apartments in an apartment building under a state order and part of the apartments using budget funds for provision to citizens as rental and social housing.
Among the innovations is also the sale of housing built under a state order to all citizens registered as needing housing improvement (currently, only those entitled to state support).
All changes come into force on June 1, 2025. State support for residential buildings, the construction of which began before the specified date, will be provided on the previous terms.