"Kommersant": “Russian mortgage system overhauled”
AHML learns to live on 60 billion roubles
The Supervisory Board of the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending (AHML) is considering the agency's business plan for the first half of 2009, and a forecast plan for the second half of the year.
According to the documents prepared for the Board, support for mortgage holders could be cut because the 200 billion roubles promised by Vladimir Putin has not been written into the budget.
Nadezhda Kosareva, a member of the Supervisory Board, told this newspaper that the agency's business plan for the first six months was based on the 60 billion roubles allocated by the government late last year.
"In addition, the budget stipulates the possibility of allocating 36 billion roubles to the agency for the issue of corporate bonds in 2009," Ms Kosareva said.
Another 28 billion roubles has been left over from last year.
"The budget for this year does not include the 200 billion roubles promised by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for supporting the mortgage market. Therefore, we will discuss possible ways of doing without it," said another member of the Supervisory Board.
Pavel Voitov, first deputy director general of the agency, told this newspaper in December 2008 how the 60 billion roubles would be spent (see the Kommersant issue dated December 25, 2008). The business plan presented for approval to the Supervisory Board differs from the initial plan.
As planned, 30 billion roubles will be used to buy and refinance mortgages and some 10 billion roubles will be spent on buying the banks' mortgage bonds. But the designation of the remaining 20 billion roubles, which was to be contributed to the charter capital of the agency's subsidiary on restructuring mortgages in arrears (ARHML), has been changed.
The charter capital of the Agency for Restructuring of Housing Mortgages Lending (ARHML) will be increased only by 10 billion roubles. The other 10 billion roubles will be used to repay a Sberbank loan (5 billion roubles), to implement pilot social projects such as mortgages involving maternity capital (some 1 billion roubles), and to create reserves against the guarantees of banks' mortgage bonds, say this newspaper's sources in the Supervisory Board.
Yelena Lokshina
