FG Urged To Subsidise Housing Sector

For the country to be able to bridge its current housing deficit estimated at about 17 million housing units, the federal government has been urged to subsidise Housing sector by putting in place policies that would ensure this.

The managing director, Infinity Trust Mortgage Bank Plc, Mr. Banjo Obaleye, stated this during the bank’s 2015 End of Year /Long Service Award Ceremony, In Abuja.

Obaleye noted that the desire of most Nigerians, especially the low income earners, to have access to affordable houses would remain a tall dream unless the federal government takes deliberate steps towards removing all bottlenecks associated with house ownership in the country.

He said, “Well, we have said it without number that for housing to be affordable to people, government has a leading role to play. Specifically, in the area of social housing, about 80 per cent of it has to be subsidised by the government because we have done a lot of affordability test and we discovered that even for someone in the position of an assistant director in the civil service to be able to pay for mortgages with the double digit interest rate is very, very difficult unless the person is stealing money.”

The ITMB boss identified the current difficulty in the transfer of property rights as one of the bottlenecks that needed to be urgently addressed by the government.

He said, “There are so many things that are wrong in our system with respect to ease of accessing mortgage, and this includes even our salary system.”