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Minister for Works and Housing, Hon. Samuel Atta Akyea has hinted that his ministry is working hand-in-hand with the Finance Ministry to create a national mortgage fund for Ghanaians to make the vision of affordable house project achievable.

He said the initiative is targeted at availing flexible terms of funding mostly to the ageing working population in Ghana to make the acquisition of homes easier.

This, he believes will help address Ghana’s housing deficit and boost government investments into the real estate sector in partnership with the private sector.

In the “Meet-The-Press” series on Tuesday, 14 May 2019 at the Information Ministry, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa South constituency was confident that the innovative mortgaging fund would tone down the plight of many Ghanaians who have difficulty in accessing funds for either personal or private housing projects in line with safeguarding the fundamental human rights of citizens.

“The fund will be a special-purpose vehicle to leverage private capital into housing and infrastructural investments and also enable the Ministry of Works and Housing channel long term appropriate price financing towards the housing sector. The fund will create, for the first time, the financial space [and] a credible mortgage regime in Ghana to enable majority of our people, especially workers [to] have their own homes in the evening of their years,” he disclosed.

He said the sources of the funds will be from pension funds, housing bonds, grants, insurance companies, primary reserve of the central bank, treasury single account and tax.

He stressed the ministry will embark on a redevelopment scheme which has been revised to “renew old neighbourhoods by demolishing some of these houses often located on prime lands and replacing them with modern houses on the same plots of land”.

“We are ready for developers, for those who will be building houses and we have also informed the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to look for a way where people will build houses because we cannot get money to build houses but government has to give them either guarantee or LC; whatever he will do for the developers to build those houses is what we need”, he mentioned.

He emphasised that success of the national housing and mortgage fund will take care of the 2 million housing deficit in the country; thus, the affordable houses project will reach the target low and middle income earners as they cannot dip their hands into their pockets to buy a house outright.

“...the mortgage arrangement the government wants to create will make the affordable house project achievable even if it will take 20 years”, he assured.