Karachi: Naya Pakistan Housing Programme (NPHP) Chairman and the former CEO of the House Building Finance Company (HBFC) Zaigham Mahmood Rizvi has urged the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to take a more ‘aggressive approach’ for lending home loans and collecting information on housing finance in the country, according to a news report published on September 29.
He made these comments while addressing a webinar titled ‘The future outlook of Housing Finance Industry in Pakistan in view of the government’s initiatives’. On the occasion, Mr. Rizvi further observed that no fiscal or regulatory incentives had been provided in the country to encourage housing finance. It was only recently that for the first time ever, the SBP decided to lower borrowing costs and encourage banks to lend more in the housing finance category.
Earlier, the government had made it compulsory for commercial banks to utilize 5% of their total lending towards housing finance. Mr. Rizvi additionally revealed that India had over 90 housing finance institutions lending home loans, whereas Pakistan only had one.
During the event, the webinar participants compared Pakistan’s present housing finance limitations to other countries in the South-Asian region, and took the opportunity to stress that housing finance required long-term funding in the country.
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