The Penang government has expressed its appreciation to the federal government for introducing the rent-to-own (RTO) scheme for housing units during the Budget 2021 announcement.

In welcoming the move, State Housing, Local Government and Town and Country Planning Committee chairman Jagdeep Singh Deo today said that in fact Penang had introduced the RTO scheme in 2014 to enable more people to own their first home.

He said the RTO in Penang had helped homebuyers to purchase low-cost (LC) or low-medium cost (LMC) units at a zero interest rate within 10 to 20 years.

“To date, we have identified 2,474 RTO housing units throughout Penang, which are almost half of the number of RTO housing units proposed during the Budget 2021 announcement,” he said in a press conference here.

Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, in his maiden Budget speech yesterday, said the government would be cooperating with selected financial institutions to provide RTO housing units until 2022, involving 5,000 PR1MA housing units nationwide valued at more than RM1 billion and reserved for first-time homebuyers.

In the Budget, he also proposed that another RM125 million would be allocated for the maintenance, repair and upgrade of LC and LMC housing units nationwide.

Meanwhile, Jagdeep hoped that the federal government would allocate not less than RM32 million in housing maintenance funds to Penang.

He said the state government had spent RM259.8 million for repairing and upgrading public and private housing schemes in Penang.

“From the previous budget (Budget 2020), RM31.7 million worth of maintenance fund has been allocated from the federal government to Penang.

“We are grateful for that and we hope we could receive not less than that for the housing of Penang residents for 2021,” he added.

Source: Bernama