AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE government has approved a fifty-per cent increase as a maximum limit for housing loans for civil servants seeking a State financial support to improve their permanent residential structures.
It also placed all the low-cost houses under the National Housing Corporation (NHC), on rents.
The structures were planned to be sold to private individuals for residential purposes but since the completion of the construction, the properties have remained idle.
The Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Developments, William Lukuvi told the Parliament in Dodoma that the government was extending the borrowing limit to 40m/- from 20m/-to accommodate increasing costs of building houses for its employees.
The funds are issued by the Housing Loan Fund and are repayable between five to ten years.
Speaking when tabling the ministry’s 133.57bn/-budget estimates and expenditure in the House on Monday, Mr Lukuvi said at least 2.13bn/-loan schemes have been approved to benefit some 121 employees.
“As of April 30, the Fund had received at least 403.7m/-in loan repayments,” he said.
He went on detailing, however, that the NHC was working to improve human settlements especially for the government employees.
He said the government had okayed the corporation to seek an additional 20bn/-in financing from the housing fund in its mission to build some 1,000 residential houses in Dodoma.
The houses are to help accommodate the influx of government employees who were transferred as a result of the mass exodus decision to shift the administrative capital from Dar es Salaam to the semi-arid region.
Mr Lukuvi revealed that negotiations had reached an advanced stage and during the financial year 2020/21, NHC will embark on constructing 400 houses as part of its plan to build 1,000 houses in Dodoma.
Apparently the minister said NHC had applied for changing its housing plans as now it seeks to transform 80 percent of its housing for rents and 20 percent for sell. Initially, only 30 percent of the structures built by NHC were for rents and 70 per cent for sale.
“We have approved the corporation plan. This also includes its plan to invest in factories for producing building materials such as blocks, roofing sheets and gravels,” he said.
For the past five years, NHC has sold about 1,595 houses as part of its 2,879 residential houses constructed all across the country.
It also sold 2,144.70 square meters of its 50,970 square meters at Morocco Square and Victoria Place.
