At a government briefing, Minister of Industry and Construction Yersaiyn Nagaspayev was asked how the launch of the 'People's Construction' project, announced by the president, would affect housing costs in the country, infohub.kz reports.

The head of the Ministry of Industry was asked whether developers might start inflating prices even more amid the implementation of this initiative.

"Yes, unfortunately, not all our developers are conscientious. The state's task is to tighten measures so that developers do not have the opportunity to do whatever they want — to set such frameworks so that developers work clearly within these frameworks and comply with all requirements," the minister said.

Responding to a question about whether the construction drive would drive prices up, he noted the scale of housing construction in the country. "Yes, we are indeed building a lot. 24 million square meters of housing is the plan for this year. This is growth, growth every year. This has never happened before. We have very large-scale housing construction underway," said Yersaiyn Nagaspayev.

According to him, the cost of state social housing is regulated by the state and the ministry. "I am taking the average, because in each region it (the price — editor's note) differs slightly — 335,000 tenge per square meter — we will keep this under control, and we will not allow any price surge here," he emphasized.

At the same time, the minister added that the state cannot dictate to private business what price per square meter it is allowed to set.

He also commented on the queues at Otbasy Bank at the launch of the Umai housing program. "We have many programs from Otbasy Bank. Here is one of the programs — we saw both on August 31 and November 3 that the amount allocated for this program was insufficient, while there were many people willing," he said.

"Officially, 870,000 people are in the queue at Otbasy Bank. Unfortunately, we do not build in such volumes. (…) We need subsidized loans for housing purchases. The second question is why the partner bank cannot issue all the money at once. The issue arose because the money ran out — applications were accepted and processed, there were some problems with the system that it could not accept such a number of applications at one time. But the tranche amounts are allocated in insufficient volume; it will gradually increase. Therefore, I still hope that there will be no such queues. But such programs are needed, this is a must," added Yersaiyn Nagaspayev.