Rehda Malaysia president Datuk NK Tong
KUALA LUMPUR: The Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda) Malaysia has welcomed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s plan to reduce the time needed by local authorities to grant development approvals.
Its president Datuk NK Tong said this would help to reduce developers’ holding costs and enable them to pass on savings to property buyers.
"Developers can then plan ahead how much a project will cost once there is a key performing indicator (KPI) that local authorities need to benchmark against," he told Bernama.
However, there will be challenges because land is a state matter and every local authority has its own time schedule when it comes to granting of approvals.
Therefore, it is important to get all states to be aligned with the Federal government's policy, he said.
"We want to have a proper approvals.... no shortcuts, just expedite it. We believe something can be done just like how we expedited our passport application process without compromising on the security features.
"Not only do we want approval time to be reduced, we also want the government to be consistent on this matter," said Tong.
According to news reports, Anwar, who is also the Finance Minister, said that the government is aware that reducing the time to grant development approvals will help ease some of the challenges facing property developers today.
Anwar said the matter will be discussed in a meeting with the Yang DiPertua Majlis Perbandaran and Datuk Bandar this week. - Bernama
