No U-turn on freeze of RM1m devt projects, says Johari

Second Finance Minister Datuk Johari Ghani Abdul Ghani re-affirmed the freeze in the development of high-rise luxury residential projects.

KUALA LUMPUR: Second Finance Minister Datuk Johari Ghani Abdul Ghani re-affirmed the freeze in the development of high-rise luxury residential projects.

He said on Tuesday that effective Nov 1, high-rise luxury residential projects with units costing RM1mil and above would not be approved and it was a ruling applicable to the entire country.

“There is no U-turn in the decision. It is something that has already been decided by the Cabinet taking cognisant of Bank Negara’s study on the mismatch of housing demand and supply,” he told reporters at the National Economic Outlook conference 2018-2019 organised by the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research.

He said that all applications before Nov 1 and on-going projects would not be affected by the decision.

“Fresh applications to build high rise residential projects above RM1mil would not be considered,” he said.

Last Friday Bank Negara came out with a report on the critical mismatch between supply and demand in the housing sector. The central bank said that there was a huge amount of serviced apartments, small office/home office (Sovo-Soho), retail and office space that was coming on stream in the next four years.

It said that these units were over-priced and did not meet the requirements of affordable housing that was in demand.

On Saturday, Johari announced that the Cabinet had frozen development on all luxury development projects to address the mismatch in the supply of houses.

However on Monday, Works Minister Datuk Fadillah Yusof was reported to have said that it was not a complete ban, prompting reports that the government was making a U-turn on the matter.