Association Demands Tax-Free Building Materials

The Association of
Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON), has said that Nigerians would continue to pay more for accommodation in major cities until the cost of building materials was subsidised through tax holiday.
Executive Secretary of the Association, Mr Ayo Adejumo, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja said that the instability in the price of building materials was responsible for the high cost of accommodation in major cities in the country.
He urged the Federal Government to provide tax relief for local manufacturers and importers of building materials in order to reduce the high cost of accommodation in major cities.
According to him, if the governance can grant tax holidays to the producers of building materials, it will go a long way in reducing the cost of building houses in the country.
Adefuro also urged government to provide enabling environment for private estate developers to strive by providing them with proper incentives, credits and mortgages.
He also attributed the ugly trend in the housing sector to lack of effective legislation guiding activities in the housing sector.
The executive secretary also posited that the non-passage of the building code by the National Assembly had made it difficult for effective regulation of the activities of operators in the housing sector.
He also said that many completed housing estates had remained unoccupied because of the high of rents attached to them as against the meager income of the average Nigerian workers, adding that if government can revitalise our industrial base, the cost of building materials will come down and many people can build houses.