It was heartening to see a fire building in Pakistan’s construction sector last year. The most ambitious one, indeed! For the prime minister to breathe life in over 40 industries while taking care of the country’s chronic housing shortage (an estimated 10 million units) was nothing short of a game changes. If Islamabad sees the revolutionary Naya Pakistan Housing Programme through, it would need nothing else to ride the next electoral campaign on. However, the skipper comes bearing more gifts. Investors have been time and again reminded of subsidised interest rates, tax amnesty schemes among an array of business-friendly policies. The state representatives must be over the moon after running the latest numbers. As per the FBR, construction initiatives have so far seen the registration of around a thousand projects to the tune of Rs 340 billion. What a promising start! And why wouldn’t there be a call for celebration? Going by the extensive information available to builders and developers on top of such a catchy markup, the PM’s package is a pretty sweet deal. There have been extensions announced to the tax amnesties and income non-disclosures. Similarly, the State Bank is busy encouraging banks to extend home loans. By all means, the lucrative package should be in full swing. But as has been with the fate of all trailblazing projects gone down in our star-crossed history, the picture looks far too rosy to be real! Helping ordinary citizens acquire houses in their name via low-cost monthly instalment sounds like a dream come true. But what to do if a majority of low-income strata fails to support even the reduced debt burden with their shoestring budget? For starters, the practical administration of such one-of-a-kind mortgage financing is no small feat. The prime minister probably had the related roadblocks in mind when he instructed the central bank to push unwilling commercial banks to speed up the processing of loan applications. There has been an outcry over the reluctance of bigwigs in dealing with aspiring homeowners. Since a large number of those knocking on their doorstep are unbanked and simply do not qualify for bank loans, their fears are not ungrounded. It is in the light of an utter absence of foreclosure laws in the country that lenders are holding their ground despite official (stringent) instructions. Those who bang the front door are either turned away instantaneously or dumped in a sea of paperwork; making the application process next-to-impossible. The success of the housing initiative critically relies on the support of the banking sector. The proverbial key to success remains the improvement in public dealing. Commercial banks need to train their staff to welcome, accommodate and appreciate the NPHP applicants (no matter how unbankable they appear). No qualms about that! Unless we have a viable mortgage industry to drive the entire process, the housing dream would remain just that: an unaccomplished dream. Then again, it is not just the logistics that matter. In view of an overwhelming majority still confused by the optics of the scheme, there remains a critical need to invest in marketing strategies. The department should take a lesson from the bonanza of private housing projects ads perpetually washing our television screens. Using layman’s terms to explain the highly-decrepit, technical particulars is the best way to go. Let’s just hope the NPHP breaks all records by servicing just the groups it was primarily designed for. We’ve had our fair share of Ashiana and Yellow Cab failures. *