The Ministry of Works and Housing stated that it is working with the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to lower interest and lending rates to reduce Nigeria’s housing deficit.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola, at the Lafarge Africa Plc quarterly webinar themed: “Concrete Ideas,” on Friday, a platform to discuss Nigeria’s policy challenges towards Nigeria’s construction, infrastructure and housing sectors.
Fashola revealed that the FG is working to reduce long term financing for Nigeria’s housing deficit. He debunked claims that Nigeria has a housing deficit of over N17 million homes, stating that there are empty houses all over the country.
What Fashola said
“I’m happy to observe that in the last four years at least, the footprints of the private sector in real estate is increasing.
What government can do to strengthen that space is to use its fiscal and monetary policies muscles to make it even more prolific to play by bringing down the rates – interest and lending rates.
Government should ensure long tenure financing and these are conversations I’m having with my colleagues, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning,” he said.
He added that policy challenges facing the industry include landlords asking tenants to pay three years rent in advance for salaries earned monthly in arrears, citing that there is a mismatch as housing will never be affordable because the bulk of available properties do not belong to the government but to private citizens.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported earlier this year that the Presidency announced that the N200 billion facility set aside for the Federal Government’s Social Housing Scheme was ready for disbursement to start the project.
This follows the finalization of the agreement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with a guarantee from the Federal Ministry of Finance for the scheme, which is expected to be disbursed at 5% per annum, generate 1.8 million jobs and deliver houses to 1.5 million Nigerian families.