The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that the Federal Government backed incentives have enabled uptake of houses, and more Public Private Partnership (PPP) in bridging housing deficit in the country.
This was made known at the REDAN 2020 Building Expo held on Tuesday at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Center in Abuja.
In a paper by the Director of Research CBN, M. Adebiyi, said that the government had created various incentives to enable private sector participation and uptake of houses to address gaps in housing deficit.
Mr. Adebiyi in his paper titled; Role of Incentives as Enablers in Supporting Mass and Affordable Housing in Nigeria, said that qualitative and affordable housing was critical to achieving sustainable economic development of a country.
He said that the high population and urbanization rates have dominated challenges for achieving mass housing in Nigeria, and that the gap was estimated to grow annually by approximately 20.0 per cent.
He said that the estimated annual housing output of between 100,000 to 200,000 units remained insignificant, compared to the 700,000 units required per year to keep up with the growing population and urban migration.
He said that the government had provided various incentives to reduce housing deficit, some in form of guarantees, interest draw backs schemes, waivers, subsidies, and deferred payments administered through various platforms.
Adebiyi said that the government, in the past has taken up efforts such as increasing construction of residential units for civil servants, and the direct construction of housing units and sale at a subsidized rate to boost housing.
He said that, in the implementation of the mass housing scheme by all tiers of government and private sector, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) had built a total of 23,038 housing units across the country.
He said that there had been provision of concessionary interest rates mostly through the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) for estate developers, Private Mortgage Banks and National Housing Funds (NHFs).
He further stated that the government had recorded successes in partnerships between the public and private sectors for housing development with the Family Homes Fund (FHF) of 2018 targeted to provide 500,000 homes and 1.5 million jobs.
Adebiyi said that there were tax incentives provided for NHF contributors in encouragement of mass delivery through the exemption of income tax on contributions and refunds of funds paid or received under the NHF.
He called on the government to create adequate long term sources of funds, and to intensify efforts to address lingering infrastructural challenges so as to reduce the cost of housing.
He urged state governments to invest significantly in infrastructures in the rural areas to reduce the pace of rural urban migration which he identified as a challenge to mass housing delivery.
