The Federal Government is planning to build a national housing bond to help housing developers access financing while tackling housing challenges through public-private partnerships.
The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, said this during an inspection tour to Cosgrove Estate located at Mabushi and Wuye, developed by the private sector; the Federal Housing Authority Estates at Guzape developed by the public sector alongside ELN Properties; and the one at Zuba developed solely by the public sector through the Federal Housing Authority in Abuja on Tuesday.
This was contained in a press statement titled ‘FG is tackling housing challenges on multiple fronts – Fashola’ issued by the ministry’s Director of Press and Public Relations, Boade Akinola, on Wednesday.
Fashola was quoted as saying, “The story is that the housing challenges are being tackled on multiple fronts through Government and Private sector initiative and that is how many services you see across the world are delivered.”
He further emphasised the role of the private sector, adding that the government cannot tackle housing challenges on its own.
“Government’s involvement in the two sites visited show the different levels of demands and service needs that we are catering for. There are many people in the housing economy who want different things, and needs and they cannot be served by one specific person, that is where the private sector comes in to play.
“We, through collaboration with the private sector, are providing for another category of off-takers and demands. But even if what we do is not enough, we have to involve them because they can play at high level, middle and lower level as well,” he said.
Fashola also disclosed that the government was planning to establish a National Housing Bond that housing developers can access at a very reasonable rate.
“That is something I have been discussing with my colleagues, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning who is in charge of fiscal policy and hopefully she will be able to engage the Governor of Central Bank, who controls our monetary policy. This is just to show you that something is going on in the sector of this economy.
“Our interest is also to know how they are financing their projects and government can help in terms of interest rates, access to more capital because as you can see, so many people are working here and jobs are being created and that is how infrastructure in housing translate to jobs. So government is interested in growing the economy and creating employment,” Fashola said.
