200,000 housing units to be erected this year to bridge housing deficit – Atta Akyea

The Ghanaian government is keen to offer affordable housing to low and middle-income earners to reduce the current housing deficit.

Minister for Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea stated 200,000 housing units are set to be erected this year adding developers are more than eager to pre-finance the buildings only requiring that government offered guarantees.

He added that the low wage earners to deserve to be homeowners and to access mortgages spread over a period for them.

Ghana is said to have a housing deficit in excess of 1.7million housing units and to address the deficit, there is the need for a minimum annual delivery of about 85,000 housing units over the next 20 years.

GREDA has however come under scrutiny for failing to bridge Ghana’s housing deficit by concentrating on building mansions for the upper tier of the middle and high-income earners and not exploring the development of basic structure for low-income earners to scale up the supply of houses.

Statistics from Ghana’s leading mortgage financing bank, GHL Bank, reveals that there is a growing interest and demand for mortgages by young professionals looking to own a home and prove that mortgages are not the preserve of offshore Ghanaians.