113 January, Minsk / Ekaterina Markovich - BELTA/. Citizens who have concluded agreements for preferential housing construction loans will be granted loans on the previous terms. This was announced today during a live broadcast by "Narodnaya Gazeta" by Alexander Gorval, Head of the Housing Construction Department of the Ministry of Architecture and Construction, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. "Citizens who have previously concluded agreements with banks for preferential housing construction loans will be granted loans on the previous terms, even if, according to the new decree, they do not fall under the categories of citizens eligible for preferential loans," noted Alexander Gorval. If a loan agreement with a bank has not yet been concluded, the loan will be processed in accordance with the new terms stipulated in Decree No. 13 "On Certain Issues of Providing State Support to Citizens in the Construction (Reconstruction) or Acquisition of Residential Premises" dated 6 January 2012. "Confirmation of a person on the list for preferential housing construction loans is not grounds for concluding a preferential loan agreement with them. Now, only those citizens who fall under the scope of the new document will be eligible for state support," he emphasized. Those citizens who have been excluded from the list of beneficiaries have been offered loans on different terms – at 31% per annum if they are registered as in need of housing, or at a commercial rate. Furthermore, the Head of the Department advised those in need of housing improvement to move to towns with a population of up to 20,000 inhabitants – this way they will be able to obtain a loan at a 10% refinancing rate. "This condition is stipulated in the decree in order to create an influx of labor into small towns and to redistribute the population from large cities," he noted. Speaking about other opportunities and options for resolving housing issues, Alexander Gorval reported that, theoretically, mechanisms such as housing savings and mortgages exist in Belarus, but they are not operational in practice. "They can only work if inflation is at a maximum of 8-10%, whereas in Belarus in 2011, it reached 108.7%," explained the Head of the Housing Construction Department. -0-

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