Mr Festus Adebayo, Chief Executive Officer, Abuja Housing Show has called on the Federal Government to use the pension funds to promote housing development in the country.
Adebayo said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
He explained that the only way the country would come out of the current recession was by providing adequate and affordable housing to its people.
“ The government in 2017 should look at how the pension fund can be used for housing development.
“Recently the Managing Director of Pencom said the organisation was working on a way that contributors to pension fund could use the fund to own their homes.
“This statement gives us the light that it is possible and so we are advising the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to look into this direction.
“He should look at how pension funds- those monies that are not being used, dividend warrant, unclaimed dividend that are lying fallow can be used for housing development.
“ This is because housing is capital intensive and without enough money, there is no way the sector can behave very well.
“I am telling you that with the housing doing well, the country will be pushed out of recession because there will be economic transactions taken place right and left.’’
Adebayo urged the Ministry of Housing not to go into direct construction of houses, but rather should make use of real estate developers with records of achievement.
He called for the adequate funding of the housing sector as well as low interest rate for the developers.
“ The era we are is an era of public private participation and it is expected to create this through the ministry, an environment conducive for the real estate developers to operate.
“ The conducive environment can come in when there is access to cheap funding and not funding through high interest rate.
“ We can’t be having high interest rate and still be talking about affordable housing.
“Similarly, we cannot be talking of the estate developers providing roads and other infrastructure and also be talking about affordable houses.
“By this, we are encouraging the ministry to put as an agenda, provision of support, infrastructure that will guarantee credit facility for estate developers.’’
He, therefore, urged the various estate developers to create a good system that would allow for access to building approvals to hasten their work.
“If all these are done, what the minister has been promising will now be actualised.
“We are waiting in 2017 for the mortgage sector to do wonders.
“Nigerians are in need of housing, it is part of fundamental rights of Nigerians, and the constitution is clear about it.’’ (NAN)