“Concerning state contracts in housing construction”

On 6 June President of the Republic of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko signed Decree No. 270 “Concerning state contracts in housing construction”.

The document aims to optimize housing construction costs, determine prices which will be fair for developers and the population.

In line with the decree, in 2014-2016 the price for the construction of a residential house and the maximum size of a subsidized loan will be calculated taking into consideration the price for one square meter in this house. The price should be equal to the nominal monthly average salary given to workers in the month when the house was commissioned. The multiplying coefficient will make up 1.2. This is envisaged by the experimental state program on housing construction for the people entitled to subsidized loans.

Houses to be built as part of the experiment will be chosen from the list of cost-effective residential houses included in the state program.

Municipal construction companies will serve as project owners. Loan resources will be transferred to the special accounts of customers.

The project owner will be responsible for the increase (decrease) in housing construction costs. If a project owner manages to save funds, he will be able to use them to finance the construction of other residential houses within the framework of state contracts.

Contractors will be responsible for the increase (decrease) in the cost of contract works. Contractors can use innovation technologies and other tools to reduce these expenses.

Every person will sign a sale and purchase agreement. It will fix a certain price of one square meter.

The maximum size of a subsidized loan must not exceed 90% (100% for families with many children) of the housing purchase cost.

The experiment will not take into account the existing maximum prices for a square meter of housing determined by the Council of Ministers.

The project will be coordinated by the Construction and Architecture Ministry.

Proposals to continue the experiment will be submitted to the Belarusian President in Q3 2016.

Please see the Russian version of this site for the full text of the Decree.