$300m loan approved for affordable housing

Accra, Oct. 12, GNA - Cabinet has approved a 300 million-dollar concessionary loan to further support and advance Government's promise of providing 100,000 affordable housing units by December 2007.

Announcing this on Thursday in Accra, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, said the Company providing the loan would also construct the houses across the country. "Government's role is to facilitate the process; with an eight-year moratorium if a flat is sold roughly at 130 million cedis the amount will be recouped in no time," he said.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang said this when he inaugurated a Local Organizing Committee for the organization of a sub-regional conference dubbed "West Africa High Level Peer Exchange on Government Enablement of Private Sector Lending for Affordable Housing.=94

The three-day conference to be held in Accra from November 27 to December 1, 2006 would afford participating countries the opportunity to share experience on how best governments could encourage the private sector and domestic services industry to invest in affordable housing.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang also announced that the Government had released funds to commence work on affordable housing in Tamale and Koforidua besides the ongoing projects at Tema, Nungua and Kumasi. "When Government says it will deliver, it's not a matter of a joke.

This clearly shows that something is being done and it is to ensure that the Government leads in the crusade to reduce the cost of construction in this country."

He said the design for the about 12 million-euro "Sodom and Gomorrah" affordable housing units project at Amasaman would soon be ready for construction to begin.

When the project is completed, a housing unit would be sold at about 6,000 dollars.

Currently, the country has a backlog in excess of 500,000 housing units and an annual demand of over 175,000 units. Government expects to clear this within the next five years.

On the upcoming conference, the Minister said the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Agency for International Development, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and UN-HABITAT would provide support.