Brasilia  - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched an ambitious two-year, 15-billion-dollar plan Wednesday to build affordable housing.

The programme has the two-fold goal of stimulating the construction sector amid the global economic slowdown and alleviating Brazil's severe housing shortage.

Experts estimate that 8 million new homes are needed to satisfy demand in South America's most populous country.

Lula's chief of staff Dilma Rousseff said that 400,000 of the new homes would be provided to families earning up to triple the minimum wage, or 624 dollars a month.

The government will use public money to subsidize the purchase of the homes and keep monthly mortgage payments below 10 per cent of the buyers' income. The Treasury is to set up a fund to guarantee mortgage payments in case the buyers lose their source of income.

"It is a brave programme and one with a great impact on the Brazilian economy, and it will certainly be one of this government's main anti-crisis programmes," said Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.

The minister noted that the programme, called "My house, my life," is set to increase GDP by 2 per cent and to generate up to 1.5 million jobs during the next two years.

Joao Crestana, head of the National Commission of the Real Estate Industry, estimated that only some 400,000 jobs would be created.

The building sector, which provides 7.1 per cent of total employment in Brazil, has been hit hard by the global credit crisis and recession.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), construction employment fell by 4.7 per cent in December- January, while the average for the economy as a whole was a decline of 1.6 per cent. (dpa)