AGI commends government reinstatement of Bank for Housing and Construction

pulse-ghana admin

May 31, 2017 11:49 AM

Ministry for Works and Housing's renovation of the Bank for Housing and Construction has been lauded by the AGI

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The initiative he said would help resolve the financial challenges facing the country’s housing and construction sector.

The rationale behind the reinstatement of the Bank for Housing and Construction is to help Ghanaian workers have access to realistic mortgages at relatively lower interest rates than charged by the commercial banks and tackle the issue of housing deficits in the country.

The Minister for Works and Housing, Mr Samuel Atta-Akyea said the move reduce the stress aged workers face in finding settlements and create an easy path to owning a house.

According to Mr Dogbegah, one of the biggest challenges that indigenous construction companies in Ghana faced was the unwillingness of most banks to extend credit facilities to the construction sector, particularly to contractors working on government contracts.

This he explained was because government was unable to make payments on time for contractual agreement and could take months, even years to pay.

“Again, in most cases, the government is also unwilling to pay interest on the delayed payments even where it is in the contract. Some indigenous contractors also sleep on their rights to enforce the conditions of contract that entitle them for compensation for fear of being victimized by their clients,” he said.

The few contractors who were bold even to seek justice were tagged litigants, which per public procurement contracts requirements was a criterion in selection of contractors. Some of them therefore quit having lawsuits or pursuing government for their money to keep a good reputation.

Mr. Dogbegah therefore urged government to allocate funds for the payment of the projects to avoid repeating these mishaps and sustain the continued construction.

Finally, he pleaded that government would facilitate the payment of of interest on delayed payment as it was the case in other jurisdictions such as the UK, South Africa and Tanzania to motivate the construction industry to take on more governmental projects.

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