12 February 2010
The government plans to set up a R1-billion guarantee fund to encourage South Africa’s banks and construction companies to develop new products to meet the country’s housing demand.
Delivering his State of the Nation address in Parliament, Cape Town on Thursday, President Jacob Zuma said a key new initiative would be to accommodate people whose salaries were too high to get government subsidies, but who earned too little to qualify for normal banks mortgage.
This would form part of the government’s work towards upgrading informal settlements in South Africa and providing proper service and land tenure to half-a-million households by 2014.
The government is to set aside over 6 000 hectares of “well-located” public land for low-income and affordable housing, Zuma added.
Rural development
The government was also busy rolling out various pilot projects under the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme.
Since the launch of the first pilot project in Giyani, Limpopo province in 2009, 231 houses had been built, while access to health and education had improved, and infrastructure had been provided to support agricultural development and training to the community.
Similar programmes were being rolled out in seven other sites across the country, Zuma said.
By 2014, the government aimed to have sites in 160 wards. The aim was for 60% of households at these sites to be able to meet their requirements through production of their own food.
Source: BuaNews
