Developers want to 'renovate' mass housing guidelines

The nation’s largest organization of housing developers wants to renovate the government’s proposed guidelines on how developers can avail of tax incentives for mass housing projects by requiring them to reserve portions of their projects for socialized housing. “We feel that 30 percent as the amount of compliance to socialized housing is quite high considering this is donation," Manuel Crisostomo, Subdivision and Housing Developers Association Inc. (SHDA) national president, told the Board of Investments in a public consultation held Friday. He said the SHDA, an organization of housing developers in the Philippines with over 160 members from chapters nationwide, is proposing 10 to 20 percent instead. According to the proposed specific guidelines of the 2011 Investment Priorities Plan (IPP), developers of vertical housing projects may donate 30 percent of the socialized housing cost—as long as it may not exceed 40 percent of the estimated income tax holiday—to non-government organizations in order to comply with the government’s socialized housing requirements. But the same guidelines also allow developers – as another option – to reserve in their housing projects an area equivalent to at least 20 percent of the building construction cost based on the actual number of qualified salable low-cost units or its equivalent total floor area. Crisostomo said SHDA is also proposing that the purchase of bonds from the government’s housing financing institutions be allowed as an additional mode of compliance for the socialized housing requirement. Still pushing for P3-M ceiling SHDA is also standing its ground on the scrapping of the cap on low cost mass housing units eligible for tax perks under the 2011 IPP, Crisostomo said. “The ceiling should be P3 million to make it consistent with the present ceiling of HUDCC [Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council]," the SHDA president said. The HUDCC, under the stewardship of Vice President Jejomar Binay, is pushing to raise to P3 million from P2.5 million the cost of low-cost, mass housing units that will qualify for tax incentives. HUDCC defines low-cost, mass housing as those that cost between P751,000 and P3 million. Housing that falls under this category will qualify for incentives under the 2011 IPP. The 2011 IPP was submitted to Malacañang in February but President Benigno Aquino III has yet to approve it. — MRT, GMA News