Malaysia’s mid-income housing scheme undergoing transformation

Ambitious government programme has been a letdown to middle-class Malaysians looking to own a home

A government housing scheme for middle-income earners will be undergoing a ‘transformation exercise’, The Sun Daily reported.

Perumahan Rakyat 1Malaysia (PR1MA), also known as the 1Malaysia Housing Programme, is participating in a due diligence process until June.

“As a government entity, PR1MA is committed to ensure that its obligation with stakeholders including homebuyers is honoured, while at the same time, we are also embarking on a transformation exercise that will enable PR1MA to maximize the effectiveness of the change effort that is taking place within the organisation to further improve our business and operations,” said PR1MA acting CEO Mohd Nazri Md Shariff in a statement to the press.

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PR1MA has achieved sales bookings of around 10,200 homes with a value of MYR2.56 billion (USD616 million) within three months of the launch of the Home Ownership Campaign (HOC 2019), he added.

The scheme was established to promote home ownership among middle-income Malaysian households that had been underserved by housing programmes which gave inordinate focus on lower-income earners.

However, only 16,682 units, representing 1.6 percent of the target, were built between 2013 and 2018 for PR1MA. Around 1.42 million people have registered for the programme to date.