Incentives will attract private sector to provide affordable housing – Koans CEO
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Koans Estate, a leading real estate company in Ghana, Professor Kofi Anokye, has asked the government to come out with a precise definition of the affordable housing.
In addition, he has asked the government to provide detailed pricing tags to the houses, and incentives, arguing that this would engender increased private sector participation to reduce the country’s wide housing deficit.
He said, for real estate developers like Koans and Regimanuel, when the government has defined affordable housing and spell out the incentives that private sector players stand to enjoy should they veer into that space, such as low interest rates on loans, ready off-taking by the government, access roads to the locations of the houses and infrastructure.”
“That is all the government has to do for us who are in the private sector and have all the resources to build such housing units,” he said, adding that when this is done many real estate developers would participate in the project.
“So, it is important for the government to first define what price is affordable, tag it with incentives, and you’ll see how people will design houses to meet that affordable housing specification,” Prof Adei, emphasised.
Prof Anokye, made these comments in an interview monitored by The Ghana Report on CTV on Wednesday, September 29.
He explained that neither the politician nor private sector, on their own, could build affordable houses for Ghanaians, Koans Estates CEO stated, noting that the country could only provide affordable houses to Ghanaians through collaboration.
In his view, the daunting bureaucracies involved in the government’s procurement processes make it difficult for it to embark on such a project without private sector participation.
He noted that little could be achieved by the government in the area of infrastructural development, especially when it comes to the provision of affordable houses to Ghanaians.
“If the government decides to go in alone, the procurement and bureaucratic systems alone will frustrate the whole process and nothing much could be achieved within the first four-year term of a government since a second term is not guaranteed any administration. And if you are unable to finish it, the next government that inherits it will bring its own experts and ideas and the whole project stalls,” he said.
“So, by the time they may have done going through the administrative processes, the prices would have shot up, and the houses may no longer be affordable,” he remarked.
Challenges
Porf Anokye underscored that real estate companies were there to provide affordable houses to meet the income levels of all Ghanaians, especially the lower and middle-income earners.
Nonetheless, he said, the real estate industry has been characterised with a number of challenges, key among them being land acquisition, and interest rates from banks.
On the issue of substandard houses by real estate developers, he acknowledged that while there were some ‘bad nuts’ in the industry, those concerned about their reputation and sustainability of their businesses would always build standard houses.
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