India builds 60,000 houses in Sri Lanka

            In June 2010, Government of India announced that it would construct 50,000 houses in Sri Lanka at an outlay of 33 billon LKR. A Pilot Project involving construction of 1,000 houses was launched in November 2010 and was completed in July 2012. An MOU with the Government of Sri Lanka on the modalities of implementation of the remaining 49,000 houses under the Project was signed on 17 January 2012. 

• Pilot Phase: Government of India entrusted an agency to construct 1,000 houses for beneficiaries in the Northern Province. The project was completed on July 2012.
• Second Phase: The second phase launched on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on 2 October 2012, which envisaged construction of 45,000 houses in the Northern and Eastern Provinces was completed in December 2018.
• An innovative owner-driven model was adopted to implement the second phase, wherein the Government of India arranged technical support and financial assistance for the owner-beneficiaries to undertake the construction / repair of their houses themselves.
• Financial assistance of LKR 550,000 per beneficiary (LKR 250,000 in case of repair cases) was released in stages, and transferred directly to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries by the High Commission of India.
• Third Phase: Third phase of the Indian Housing Project involves construction of 4,000 houses for estate workers in the Central and Uva Provinces through an innovative community-driven approach. Letter of Exchange with the Government of Sri Lanka for this phase was signed in April 2016 and work started in October 2016.
• In the third phase considering the difficulties in the terrain and accessibility of materials and other logistics LKR 950,000 is disbursed per beneficiary.
• As on date close to 2300 houses are complete in the third phase and the construction of the remaining houses is currently underway.
• Fourth Phase: During his visit to Sri Lanka on 12 May 2017, Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi announced an additional 10,000 houses for the estate workers and the agreement was formalized in August 2018. This entails an additional commitment of LKR 11 billion. Preparatory work for these additional houses is currently underway and the construction of these houses is expected to start soon. This makes the total number of houses being built in the plantation areas 14,000.
• As on 31 December 2019, more than a total of LKR 31 billion has been disbursed by the Government of India under Indian Housing Project.