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A Ghanaian property investor, Joe Anim, has advised the government to give up its affordable housing projects for private entities to take over.
Mr Joe Anim, speaking on Angel FM’s Anopa Bofo morning show, observed that governments often than not, have failed to achieve their goals in the housing industry.
The major contributors to shelter development currently are ordinary workers who build homes to reduce the housing deficit which stands at about two million, the investor indicated.
“The government should be out of the sector because they don’t know how to do it. Wherever they attempt to build the homes it turns into problems,” he told Kwamina Sam Biney, the show host.
The sector minister, Francis Asenso-Boakye, had in an earlier interview granted to Daily Graphic, affirmed that successive governments had been unsuccessful at implementing such policies but blamed it on funding.
According to him, banks in the country were mostly commercial whose main sources of funding were deposits in the form of salaries, which did not guarantee long-term funding and provide mortgages of up to 35 years.
“In the advanced countries where the financial system is robust, workers are provided with mortgages to own homes which the financial institutions buy and then workers are made to pay for by instalments, sometimes up to 40 years,” Daily Graphic quoted.
That said, he indicated that when he assumed office, he realised that making the project entirely a government programme would fall through.
“There was, therefore, the need to evolve a strategy that could leverage private sector investment with government support,” he said.
