Housing Minister – Gov’t’s housing solution, a fast-track method to homeownership

The government’s implemented sustainable housing solution is a fast-track method for citizens to
acquire their own homes. This initiative has thus far been fruitful.
This was the disclosure made by Housing and Water Minister, Colin Croal, in an exclusive
interview earlier in the week with a government affiliated media house. “This is a fast-track
method for persons to own their own homes and the system is very simple,” Croal said. The
minister outlined the process which applicants undergo to determine their qualifications to
benefit from the programme. “First of all, the applicants have to be within our system. They have
to be pending applicants, then secondly we conduct a pre-qualification to examine the category
for the type of houses the persons will be able to benefit from and then we send that information
on to the bank… they engage that individual and once they’re successful, the bank sends back
their name and then we make the necessary allocation,” he explained.
Croal noted that the government’s housing initiative is an ongoing one and one that is being
recognised. “It’s an ongoing programme and certainly we’ve had positive responses and even
recently we’ve had the Minister Duguid, responsible for Housing in Barbados would have visited
Guyana and he would have recognised the ambitious programme that we have for the citizens of
Guyana,” Croal said.
The Minister disclosed that the banks have been playing a critical role in supporting this
initiative as many of them have also reduced their mortgage borrowing rates to facilitate the
Guyanese population. “They recognised that they can have a number of potential persons be
able to borrow and so they’ve been very supportive and they’ve been involved in helping on
quickly pre-qualifying persons,” he said.
Croal stressed that this initiative has many other economic benefits for the people of the country.
“There are a lot of spin offs, of course, because in the construction sector itself, apart from
employment benefits there’s a lot of trickle-down impact of persons in transportation, for persons
who sells snacks at the corners, various persons are involved, of course the suppliers for
materials will benefit too so it’s a domino effect once you have construction and so that is why
we’ve been driving the process to have more homeownership,” he said.
Minister Croal disclosed that it is the government’s commitment to allocate 25,000 houses to
citizens at affordable prices within its first term in office.