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Gov’t to establish National Housing Fund soon

Government is set to establish a National Housing Fund to address the huge housing deficit in the country.

Alhaji Collins Dauda.

Ghana’s housing deficit is estimated to be in excess of 1.7 million units, thus it will take over 17 years to clear this shortfall assuming a hundred thousand units are built every year.In an interview with Citi News after the launch of a National Housing policy, outgoing Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda said, “cement is mostly used in building homes in this country. So for every bag of cement, If we agree that a levy of say one pesewa or one Ghana cedi is put on every bag of cement, considering the volume of cement we produce and use in this country, it will rekindle a lot of revenue and that revenue will form the basis of the housing fund.”The Minister added that, “We can also source parliamentary funding to raise monies that will go into this fund. If you are a civil servant and you do not have money to buy a house outright, you just run to the mortgage firm and because the firm is being founded by the Housing fund, it will support them to get for themselves a house.”The fund`s main objective is to provide investors with capital appreciation in a long term diversified portfolio to build housing units that will be very affordable to middle and lower class income earners in Ghana.The professionally managed fund’s primary focus is also to invest mobilised funds into securities of real estate companies, development of real estate or invest equity in companies that engage in real estate investment activities.A National Housing Fund will serve as a source of revenue for the production of new housing, and the preservation or rehabilitation of existing housing that is affordable for low-income people.The initial goal of the National Housing Fund should be to produce, rehabilitate and preserve housing units.The Fund should be capitalized with ongoing, permanent, dedicated and sufficient sources of revenue to meet the goal of demanding housing units.Sources of funding should be identified and dedicated to the Fund and, if necessary, additional appropriations should be made to meet the goal.

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