We have provided housing to more than 800,000 families with subsidies from the World Bank, May Hamid, Chief Executive Officer of Egypt’s Social Housing and Mortgage Finance Fund, said during the session titled “A New Deal for Housing Finance” held within the framework of WUF13, APA-Economics reports.
She stated that one of the main problems during the creation of a housing system for low-income populations in Egypt was the fragmentation of the market and the involvement of numerous institutions in the process.
May Hamid noted that at the initial stage there were 200 million dollars allocated by the World Bank for subsidies, but there were no suitable houses to which those subsidies could be applied: “There was money, but we could not find houses to subsidize.”
According to her, in 2014 the government created a special fund that combined all mechanisms, and this fund coordinated the construction of housing, mortgage financing and the provision of subsidies.
May Hamid stated that more than 800,000 families have been provided with housing in Egypt over the last 10-12 years.
She added that the 1.2 billion dollars in subsidies received from the World Bank later made it possible to attract larger-scale financing from private banks.
The Egyptian official emphasized that the mortgage market in the country, which had previously been almost non-existent, has now reached a financing level of more than 2.5 billion dollars for low-income families.
According to her, initially only three state banks participated in the program, while currently more than 32 financial institutions, including foreign and regional banks, have joined the system.
