Sequel to Federal Government’s recent partnership with the organised private sector, the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), has urged Ministries, Departments and Agencies  to withdraw from building housing units.

The institute has noted that the budget for housing is better spent on augmenting the resources for mortgages for all classes of Nigerians.

Making it’s study on the 2012 budget known recently, the Think-Tank of the NIQS suggested ways by which the Federal Government, through its budget could utilise the construction sector, as a major contributor to the agenda of transformation in the country.

In the study release which was made available to The Tide, the NIQS posited that the overhaul of the total housing and ecology, particularly as it touches the role of the MDAs is long overdue.

The study posited “we hope that these reforms, to be encapsulated in a new National Housing policy will be completed by the second quarter of 2012.”

According to the committee which was directed by its president, Mr. Agele Alufohai – “Nigeria is estimated to have a deficit of more than 16 million housing units, the best way of resolving the country’s housing crisis and unleashing N60 trillion (the cost of constructing the required number of houses) to the industry is creating a system of long-term mortgage financing for millions of Nigerians.”

Such structural change, the body said, will affect the role fo ministries and agencies in the sector and hence the provision for them in the budget.

Corlins Walter