Chamber Charges Estate Developers On Investment

The Port Harcourt
Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (PHCCIMA), has charged property developers to invest in the sector.
The President, PHCCIMA, Dr. Emi Membere Otaji, gave this charge in a chat with The Tide, last week in Port Harcourt.
Member-Otaji stated that as a Chamber, PHCCIMA is aware that there is a housing deficit affecting not only the lower class of the economy, but all classes of the society and has conveyed same to member developers.
He said, “we have made the stakeholders realize that there is a housing deficit in all areas, the high, middle and low income earners and have called on developers to invest in the different classes.
He further said, ‘we are also talking about issues of Certificate of Occupancy that will make it easier to get lands so that they’ll be able to use the lands to get loans from the banks to do business”.
On her part, the State Deputy Governor, Dr. Ipalibo Harry-Banigo was apologetic in her speech when she said all bottlenecks infact, CsofO have now been abolished as the government has started the process of obtain cost by signing them.
Harry-Banigo expressed that obtaining CsofO would enable developers obtain land from banks to enhance the built industry business.
Also speaking, a property developer, Mr. Barry Badom, expressed delight at the news that the governor had started signing CsofO would be speedily delivered to the owners so they can quickly deploy it to be used as collateral.
He also said, banks were no longer lending money to real estate investors due to foreign exchange crunch affecting the nation’s economy.
He said, “in other economics, the government encourages intending homeowners to forge ahead but it looks like our government, through its politics, bureaucracies, discourage would-be house owners”. Furthermore, he said, “government needs to address the issue of multiple taxation, which has the potential of destroying any business.
“With the issues of C of O out of the way, Government needs to come up with real-estate-friendly policies to make land ownership cheap and removing the bottlenecks militating against the real estate industry”, he added.

Tonye Nria-Dappa