By Echeburu Oby
The Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), Arc. Ahmed Dangiwa, stated at the 2020 Housing Summit held in Abuja, that the bank has disbursed an accumulative amount of N265bn under the National Housing Fund Scheme in other to boost the delivery of affordable housing in the country.
The NHF provides fixed interest mortgages for home acquisition, an individual construction loan to aid self-development, a micro-loan for home renovation and rent-to-own, it has several loan channels fixed to real estate developers and cooperative societies to fund construction of affordable houses at uniformed prices.
The N265bn signifies an increase by over N112bn or 74 per cent over the N152.5bn, which the present management met in early 2017. In the last three years, almost 8,700 new homes have been added, a growth of 43 per cent, to get an aggregate of 29,133 funded housing units and the NHF crew developed by N186bn signifying 80 per cent to reach an aggregate amount of N418bn as of September 2020. 570,000 contributors have been added to attain a contributor base of over 5.1 million NHF subscribers.
Concerning the home renovation micro-loan, Dangiwa indicated that the bank has been able to expand this by over 2,000 per cent from about 2,600 to about 56,000 loans in the last three years.
βWith just a contribution of N450 per month over a period of six months, a contributor becomes entitled for any of the FMBNβs loans. Under the 5-year strategic plan.
The bank intends to target the non-waged informal sector into the NHF Scheme in achieving the aims of financial inclusion.β
Dangiwa, said banks and insurance companies are yet to comply with the investment mandate specified by law and identified the consequence of non-compliance. The housing finance sector has been deprived of significant investments that could have added value to the housing delivery, job creation and economic growth. With this, the bank would be promoting a new NHF investment structure that will address the fears of these mandatory investors.
The new structure proposes that banks and insurance companies contribute five per cent of their Profit-After-Tax as mandatory investments into the National Housing Fund as opposed to shares of their loan portfolios of life/non-life funds and then the proceeds are paid into a Special Purpose Truck jointly established by these institutions and FMBN to ring-fence the investments in either real estate capital market instruments or the financing of large-scale residential housing projects on affordable but economically feasible basis, for a specified period at an approved rate of profit.
Dangiwa noted that this would deliver a satisfying solution for the bank and Nigerians who are in need of affordable housing.
