Promoting Gender Equality in Housing Finance Project

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1. The project is aligned with the following impact: gender equity promotion and sustainable economic growth achieved. The project will have the following outcome: acquisition and renovation of housing units by women increased. 2. The project will deliver the following outputs: Output 1: Long-term affordable mortgage financing for eligible women borrowers made available. Through the ADB loan HCSBK will provide mortgage loans exclusively targeted at women borrowers to finance at least 3,000 women; Output 2: Accessibility to HCSBK's lending products for eligible women borrowers improved; HCSBK will adopt a gender policy and will conduct at least three nationwide public awareness campaigns on housing finance products for women; Output 3: Gender inclusiveness of the banking sector's housing finance assessed. This output will be delivered by conducting a nationwide study on women's access to housing and finance products which will have to be endorsed by the government.3. ADB will provide HCSBK with an FIL of $100 million equivalent. HCSBK will use the tenge proceeds from ADB to offer affordable residential mortgage finance exclusively to women customers, each acting as the sole borrower and bearer of the legal title to a residential housing unit. The mortgage subloans provided by HCSBK will be used for the acquisition of residential housing units or the renovation of existing homes. A minimum of 60% of the proceeds from the ADB loan will be allocated to provide mortgage loans to female borrowers located in rural regions, i.e., those outside of the four large cities with the lowest poverty rates: Aktau, Almaty, Atyrau and Nur-Sultan. While the maximum monthly income level per household has been set at T320,000, at least 20% of all mortgage loans financed by the ADB loan will be to low-income female borrowers with a monthly household income of less than T200,000. A price ceiling of T30 million will apply for housing units that can be financed under the ADB project, as well as a ceiling of T3.7 million for renovation loans.