Wednesday, June 13th 2012 - 08:17 UTC

Cristina Fernandez announces plan to build 400.000 new houses in four years

In an attempt to recover the political initiative and sliding opinion polls Argentine President Cristina Fernández announced the launching of an ambitious housing program aimed at building 400.000 homes in the next four years.

Deputy minister Axel Kicillof, the rising star at the launching of the program

The mortgage financing program will grant up to 350.000 Pesos (approx 65.000 US dollars) exclusively for the construction of new homes and interest rates will range from 2 to 14%, depending on the family's monthly income.

At the ceremony on Tuesday afternoon the Head of State signed the decree creating the Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program, which was then introduced by Deputy Economy Minister Axel Kicillof. Funds will be provided by Social Security ANSES funds and Argentine Treasury.

ANSES head Diego Bossio clarified that there is no required minimum income to access the mortgage and explained that interest rates shall range from 2 to 14%, depending on the family’s monthly incomes.

The mortgages options include with or without a plot of land, for which the Argentine government has done a survey of all the urban land it owns, some of it “very valuable” that will be used for housing programs.

Deputy Economy minister Kicillof mentioned that a total of 17.000 hectares of urban land had been surveyed and will be available.

The mortgage loans will be granted exclusively for the construction of new homes and will be payable in between 20 and 30 years.

“The Government aims to reverse the housing crisis which the country has been dragging since neo-liberal policies were applied to Argentina's economy in the seventies” added Kicillof.

The young economist who is described as “too interventionist” by orthodox colleagues, emphasized that loans are for the construction of “new houses” and not “credits to buy new houses”, which was the main cause behind the monumental financial speculation and real estate bubble in the US.

Cristina Fernandez said the housing program will demand an agreement with all companies from the construction sector to avoid the “shortcuts” and “price fixing” when government plans are launched.

Private banks have a role to play, “instead of being so generous with the financing of credit cards and plastic money, we would now like them to invest some of those formidable earnings in the construction of new houses”, added the president.

Argentine Government officials including Vice-President Amado Boudou, Buenos Aires province Governor Daniel Scioli, Industry Minister Débora Giorgi, Central Bank governor Mercedes Marcó del Pont also attended the ceremony.

Kicillof is considered the rising star among President Cristina Fernandez closest advisors, while Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido who for the last eight years has been managing billions in investment funds and was a very close friend of Nestor Kirchner, is rapidly loosing ground and influence.

 

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1 Steveu (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 08:37 am Report abuse
Will they bother to put in central heating as gas is running short?
2 JuanGabriel (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 08:39 am Report abuse
And all construction contracts must be placed with a government approved construction company (owned by Kirchner or her cronies)
3 Self Determination (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 08:43 am Report abuse
Paid for with other countries money, defaulted U.S. and World Bank loans, she has no shame, time is running out.
4 Idlehands (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 08:48 am Report abuse
....and the area developed will be known as “Christina City” where the poor shall flock to honour and acclaim their illustrious benefactor.

A couple of murals on each street corner will probably be suitable zones of worship.
5 PirateLove (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 10:30 am Report abuse
A Distraction tactic nothing more, while Argenweener is fed to the dogs.
6 The Chilean perspective (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 10:55 am Report abuse
I can see it a mile away... The loans will be prioritized to government supporters first, and the contracts awarded to government cronies. There will be wholesale theft and corruption whilst all the while the pensions of ordinary Argentines are plundered to create an immense housing bubble that will no doubt burst when the loans are not repaid by delinquent mortgage holders. This is a bad idea, whenever the government hands out heavily subsidized loans of other peoples money to create housing activity, it only succeeds in creating a surge in prices of homes as well as building materials and labor. Another bad idea from comrade Axel Kicillof.
7 British_Kirchnerist (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 10:56 am Report abuse
What a great initiative, if only someone would do this kind of thing to reverse the housing crisis in Britain! Btw was this the big announcement that some people on here had been predicting to be her resignation???
8 Welsh Wizard (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:20 am Report abuse
@7
BK, being a Brit I’m slightly surprised that you didn’t know about this:

“The government in investing £4.5billion in a building programme to deliver up to 170,000 new affordable homes, on top of a further £1.3billion to get stalled developments back on track and to build the infrastructure needed to unlock sites for housing.”

“This is on top of a range of measures to help aspiring first-time buyers take their first step onto the property ladder including the NewBuy Guarantee which offers the chance to buy a newly-built home with just a fraction of the deposit that's normally required.”

So we’re covered then as this is already in the pipeline and underway. Still really suprised that you hadn't picked up on this, it is pretty main stream news in our country. I also doubt very much that the owners of these new homes will be charged interest rates of 14%...
9 Conqueror (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:25 am Report abuse
How is this supposed to work? The financing is “exclusively” for the construction of new homes. And who is going to “buy” them? And where do “they” get the money from? Who thinks 350,000 pesos is a bit expensive for a couple of dozen sheets of corrugated iron? Methinks there are some supposed “freebies” in here. Where do the construction companies get the money to buy the materials and pay their workforce? Do they take out a block of mortgages and then pass them on to the buyers? Where's the profit? And then the “buyers” have to sign up to mortgages for 20 or 30 years that they didn't negotiate in the first place? But it depends on the family's income?
10 GreekYoghurt (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:41 am Report abuse
Why isn't Killicof holding a late night vigil next to Maximo's bed, crying and wailing about how he's going to look after him forever and ever?

Seems this is an old photo then.
11 yankeeboy (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:57 am Report abuse
Every Prez for the last 70 yrs has had some sort of house building program yet the slums keep growing. Most of the time people don't qualify and if they do the amount of the loan no way covers the cost of building so they still need 50-75% as a down payment.

This is just another scam for cronies to become rich using the Pension $ of the workers.

Anses is already bankrupt so I wonder where Pension payments will be coming from...directly from the budget I guess. Print Print Print.
12 EnginnerAbroad (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 12:18 pm Report abuse
ANSES head Diego Bossio clarified that there is no required minimum income to access the mortgage and explained that interest rates shall range from 2 to 14%, depending on the family’s monthly incomes.

Has Argentina learnt nothing from the the US housing crash. This has sub prime morgage written all over it. It is designed to intrench reliability of the poor on the Peronist government. If they want to do something to help the economoy and people sort out the bloody inflation.
13 British_Kirchnerist (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 12:19 pm Report abuse
#8 Surprised, and a bit embarrased, that I didn't pick that up myself =( About bloody time I'd say though. And I note that its less than half the number of homes for a larger overall population...
14 yankeeboy (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 12:45 pm Report abuse
13. More people in UK have access to mortgages than in Arg so gov't programs aren't as necessary.
Also Arg will not end up building these houses the money will quietly disappear into cronies pockets and no one will ever talk about it again.
15 War Monkey (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 12:53 pm Report abuse
@8 Welsh Wizard (#)
Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:20 am

BK is not a Brit. It might lived here for a time, it might still live here but I doubt it. It might have British connections somewhere along the way but it is not a Brit. It's sycophantic pap aside it's grasp of UK politics just seems aloof. There is no substance, no context to anything that it says.

I think it is one of the La Campora Mind F*ck Regiments special operations troopers. It is persistent and it covers it's tracks reasonably well but it just talks the kind of shite no Brit this side of a dick sucking Whitehall mandarin would be caught dead saying . It's terms are couched in cotton candy, chocolate and raisins but when you crack it open you find a turd inside it.
16 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 02:56 pm Report abuse
BK
I am not short on words, so please bear with the length of this post. It is requisite, even in this summary sketch, to go back a few posts to see how every so often, British_Kirchnerist tries fomenting squalid forms of political tyranny. Whenever he gets caught doing so he changes topic calculated to divert the thread.

The worst sorts of gormless twaddlers there are have increasingly been feeding on the politics of resentment, alienation, frustration, anger, and fear. British_Kirchnerist has a lot to answer for in regard to that.

Finally, any one of the points I made in this post could be turned into a complete research paper, but the conclusion of each would be the same: British_Kirchnerist is morally debased and has no convictions of right or wrong.
17 polacandino (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 02:57 pm Report abuse
@9 Your question about how this will work is a good one. It appears that despite all the charts and other plan details put out by the government, there are some fuzzy areas. While it is clear that the loans are for construction and not for purchase of existing homes, how the money will be distributed is not clear. Many recipients of these loans will want to claim they are constructing the homes on their own and request direct payment from the Banco Hipotecario which makes the loans. Of course such direct payments could lead to massive fraud. Sending the money directly to construction companies could result in cronyism but that's probably OK as long as the cronies actually do the work that they have been paid for.

The interest rates of up to 14 percent may seem high from the British perspective, but given that the loans are denominated in an ever-inflating peso, these rates are a giveaway. The interest rate schedule that charges a higher rate for borrowers with higher incomes seems somewhat unfair.

The big question is where the money will come from. They apparently will use pension money along with payment promises to back these loans, but I think when all is said and done, the money will just be “created electronically” just as the banks do in England and America. So it appears that this program is Argentina's version of what they call quantatative easing in America. Instead of printing money and sending it to investment banks to cover bad bets, Argentina is printing money and sending it to poor people to build houses. Both methods of pumping up the economy have their fraud possibilities, but I think on balance it is better to put the money directly into economic activity that will benefit the majority of citizens. This program has got to be better than sending new money to Goldman Sachs.
18 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 03:05 pm Report abuse
A quote from Thomas Paine: “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

I assume you already know that the chief difficulty in writing about Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program is that the passage of time will make it clear to even the more slow among us that a common thread runs through most of its theatrics, a thread so sordid that it disgusts me nearly to the point of physical illness, but I have something more important to tell you.

Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program's pranks promote a redistribution of wealth. This is always an appealing proposition for Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program's patsies because much of the redistributed wealth will undoubtedly end up in the hands of the redistributors as a condign reward for their loyalty to Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program.

Let me close where I began: It's hard to fathom just how cuckoo Argentine Bicentennial Mortgage Program is.
19 Britworker (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 03:25 pm Report abuse
Didn't they default once before after they max'd their credit. What's that song dame shirley sings - just a little bit of history repeating!
20 cLOHO (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 04:50 pm Report abuse
Yep see the cash fizzle away into the maximos pie fund. Money is probably coming out of stolen Spanish oil company, or our 250 million the rgs owe uk.
21 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 06:09 pm Report abuse
Death Deserved

what have you wrought?
a fog of chaos as feelings creep.
once we drank of heaven,
innocent and glad-hearted,
but your desire died.
a deadened pool of pain -
thoughts follow love, follow hate,
love taken away.
in a haze of tears,
i reject you.

[Kretina to Festor before killing him]
22 GreekYoghurt (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 06:13 pm Report abuse
Can Bob the Builder fix the Argentine economy?
23 cLOHO (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 06:27 pm Report abuse
She neede jimmy Saville to fix it for her, but unfortunately he's gone the same way as uncle festor
24 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 06:33 pm Report abuse
Is Jimmy Saville dead?
25 Martin Woodhead (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 07:20 pm Report abuse
Unfortunatly we need more like 1/2 million more homes
26 AmericanLight (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 08:00 pm Report abuse
More villas on the way
27 jerry (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 09:12 pm Report abuse
Do the math; $6 billion dollars (not pesos) per year. And this is to come from the retirement fund and “tax money”. Argentina cannot pay its debts, cannot pay all its government employees (ask the provinces), and it is going to have all this extra money? Another CFK fairy tale.
28 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 13th, 2012 - 11:21 pm Report abuse
jerry
It depends how much was in the pension pot they stole and how much they sell the houses for...

El Cuento del Tio:
I stole you pension, now I am going to build a house with the money I stole from you and sell it to you at more than it cost me to build it.

When will Maximo be diversifying his portfolio to include construction?
29 GreekYoghurt (#) Jun 14th, 2012 - 12:37 pm Report abuse
@28 Maximo has always been in construction... construction of hotels and cream buns..

... and gold thrones.
30 Logorrhea Alert (#) Jun 14th, 2012 - 03:45 pm Report abuse
@29 GY
I knew he had bought some hotels - a clever ploy when you think that mummy is going to devalue the peso, hence boost tourism.

I didn't know that he was already in construction.

If I were him I would keep my golden throne in Switzerland or somewhere safe.

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