MHC plans to build 250 000 houses

Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) has unveiled plans to build 250 000 housing units in 10 years to reduce the high demand for houses in the country.

Speaking in an interview last week on the sidelines of an annual general meeting for the corporation’s workers union, MHC chief executive officer Jordan Chipatala said there are at least 100 000 applications for houses against its 6 000 houses nationwide.

He said there are also “countless other informal applicants” who look for the institution’s residential houses through phone calls.

Chipatala said: “The demand for houses is in excess of what we are looking at. Currently, the applications that we have recorded are over 100 000 for rentals and over 20 000 looking for houses to buy.”

He said MHC is working on reducing the problem through a project dubbed ‘250’ aimed at sourcing about $18 million (about K18 billion) for the 250 000 houses project in 10 years.

“We hope to reduce the high demand for our houses through this project awaiting the government’s approval, one of the ways to source funds for this project is by obtaining soft loans from outside,” Chipatala said.

He said the rising cost of construction materials and high interest rates charged by commercial banks on loans has made the corporation struggle to construct more houses.

Chipatala acknowledged that most of MHC houses are in poor state as they were built between 1970 and 1980.

Meanwhile, Mzuzu-based social and governance commentator Dan Msowoya says government should engage the corporation with potential investors into public private partnership to help MHC achieve its legal mandate of providing decent and affordable housing for town and urban dwellers.

He described MHC as one of the less empowered and underdeveloped State enterprises despite the institution’s huge mandate in the country.

But in a separate interview, Minister of Lands Deus Gumba said government is already working on plans to identify investors to team up with MHC under the PPP agreement to build more houses and address the problem.