After the state signed nine roof agreements (with the municipalities of Rosh HaAyin, Modi'in, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Bialik, Ramle, Rishon Lezion, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, and Herzliya, a 10th agreement is scheduled for signing this Thursday by the Ministry of Finance, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), the Ministry of Construction and Housing, and the Netanya municipality.
The roof agreement with the Netanya municipality involves the construction of 12,000 new housing units in various parts of the city in the coming years. The agreement will ensure millions of shekels in preliminary financing, and is designed to deal with future construction sites, such as the Southern Seafront site, Ein Hatchelet, Southern Kiryat Hasharon, the Havatzelet site, and the Congresses center.
The roof agreements program stipulates that the state will finance infrastructure and undertake to provide a suitable budget for new neighborhoods in order to avoid new neighborhoods being built before the infrastructure is ready and construction delays caused by development work. For their part, the municipalities undertook to promote the plans and provide building permits within three months. This program began under former ILA director general Bentzi Lieberman, together with then-Ministry of Finance Yair Lapid and then-Minister of Construction and Housing Uri Ariel.
The current government decided to continue promotion of the plan. The target for roof agreements in 2014-2015 is 100,000 housing units. At a meeting of the housing cabinet several months ago, the housing cabinet, led by Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon, approved a new target of 75,000 housing units for the roof agreements in 2016-2017. In many cases, the program has made no progress, and the aim now in the roof agreements is to expedite them with the municipalities with which roof agreements have been signed for providing building permits and removing objections.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 5, 2016
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