Montenegro vows to ‘do everything’ to try to build twice as many houses as planned in the PDP

The Prime Minister promised on Monday that the government would “do everything” to find a “financial solution” that would allow it to build, together with municipalities, twice as many houses as envisaged in the PDP, which is 26,000 houses.

Luís Montenegro made this promise at the Prime Minister’s official residence in São Bento after presiding over the signing ceremony of agreements with 18 municipalities of Lisbon and the Tagus Valley region, Guimarães, Fafe, Matosinhos and Lamego on a programme to support access to housing, within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), which provides for the construction of 4,483 new homes for the most needy families.

The Chief Executive stressed that the €400 million budget for the construction of these 4,483 homes was made public last Friday at a meeting of the Council of Ministers and is part of the “efforts” the government is making to ensure that the objectives set out in the PDP are achieved.

Noting that the implementation of the housing programme envisaged in the PDP has been delayed, Luis Montenegro stressed that the executive power is “doing everything to speed it up” in terms of financing, accusing the previous government of not having “properly ensured” the necessary additional investments.

According to the prime minister, the PRR provides funding of 1,400 million euros for the construction of 26,000 homes – an amount that was increased by 390 million euros from the state budget by the previous leader, but which the prime minister considers insufficient.

“We needed another 400 million euros. (…) We are talking about 790 million euros that the state budget will approve and allocate for this program, without which it would be impossible not only to build the houses that were planned in the PRR, but also to use the PRR’s own funds,” he emphasized.

The Prime Minister stressed that with guaranteed funding, “these 26,000 houses still need to be built,” and then “deal with many more, even slightly larger than these, which municipalities also want to build and construct,” despite this. It should be noted that the executive branch still does not have “all the financial instruments necessary to advance it.”

“I want to leave you here, on behalf of the Government, with a word of confidence that we will do everything in the coming months to find, in addition to these investments from the PRR and the state budget, a financial solution that can, with municipalities, most likely, set themselves the goal of doubling the construction of houses, which is guaranteed by this program,” he assured.

Luis Montenegro said the delay in the housing programme was also due to “excessive bureaucracy and procedures” which he said “make it very difficult to approve applications”.

In order to “overcome this blockage”, the Prime Minister stressed that in the contracts signed today with the government, municipal councils are taking on a “term of responsibility” under which they undertake to “comply with all the provisions provided for in the programme”.

“In the logic of the process and in the logic of any inconsistencies that may be found, they can be corrected as the process progresses (…) instead of waiting for the resolution of everything, which is a small bureaucracy, sometimes details even stop the process,” he explained.

Montenegro stressed that the executive is committed to accelerating the implementation of the PRR not only in the housing sector, but also in health and education, acknowledging that it is a “massive task” and “very demanding”.

“They will always expect the government to speed up processes, make the utmost effort to eliminate bureaucracy and waste time and opportunities for additional funding where it is needed,” he assured.