The Orissa Rural Housing and Development Corporation (ORHDC) has become the first public sector unit in the country to qualify for refinancing by the National Housing Bank (NHB).
The corporation has also got approval from NHB to implement the proposed rural housing scheme, to be launched by the prime minister on the Independence Day.
In the national scene, ORHDC has been approved by the NHB to participate in the rural housing scheme to be launched by the government as stated in the budget speech of finance minister P Chidambaram.
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ORHDC is the first and the only housing finance company promoted by the state government to provide shelter finance to the rural poor. During 1996-97, the corporation has assisted 11,745 economically weaker sections (EWS) comprising rural poor for constructing fire-proof shelter. This represents an increase of around 3,500 over that during the previous year.
Cumulatively ORHDC has assisted 20,588 EWS beneficiaries for their rural housing activities, through 540 community management groups (CMGs) with a total financial assistance of Rs 19 crore against the sanctioned approvals of Rs 40.14 crore.
Executive director (finance) of the corporation Amritilingam said the total working funds of the corporation have increased from Rs 30.36 crore to Rs 42.27 crore last year.
He said, after visiting some of the rural housing programmes implemented by ORHDC, the head of the KFW (Germany) project co-ordinating office in India appreciated the progress made by the corporation in this sphere.
The KFW head suggested that the corporation may make attempts to get adequate share out of the Germany financing lines for rural housing activities. The corporation was promoted as a public enterprise by the Orissa government in 1994.
ORHDC provides low cost housing finance to rural poor through community management groups at the panchayat level, thus ensuring peoples participation in their own housing, eliminating the middlemen or contractors.
The corporation functions as a principal housing finance institution in Orissa in financing and promoting rural housing and related activities as facilitator instead of builder.
The Orissa government had declared ORHDC as the nodal agency for the building centres in the state to provide technical, financial and managerial support to the building centres. The government had also decided to promote private entrepreneurship for development of building centres in the state as per the policy decision taken by the union government.
All matters relating to private building centres shall be channelised through the corporation. The progress of the building centres and performance monitoring, evaluation and auditing will be taken up by the corporation.
At present, 27 building centres are in operation in 20 out of 30 districts in the state. Besides this, the Orissa government is considering to set up rural building centres at block level in 100 blocks out of 314. A draft action plan has been prepared by the corporation for the purpose.