Junior Housing and Water Minister, Susan Rodrigues said that her government managed to distribute more house lots in one year than the number of allocations conducted by the former APNU+AFC regime during 2015 and 2020. Minister Rodrigues was at the time making her contribution to the national budget debate during the 40th sitting of the Twelfth Parliament.
Minister Rodrigues said when the government took office in August 2020, it met a backlog of 70,000 applications, coupled with low occupancy in housing schemes where infrastructure was lacking.
She said that the housing sector today, has been revitalised. This saw the government surpassing the coalition’s just over 7,000 house lot allocation during their tenure, in just one year.
“To date, we have already accomplished all of the housing commitments listed in our manifesto, including the allocation of 10,000 house lots and out of that 3,926 went to women,” she said.
Minister Rodrigues attributed the growth in the construction and manufacturing sector and the increase production of sand in 2021, to the government’s robust housing and infrastructure programmes, noting that these are as a result of careful planning and implementation of the government’s policies.
“The growth in the construction sector in 2021 is directly co-related to our infrastructure programmes and our housing programme. The $5 billion increase in real estate loans issued by commercial banks is directly co-related to our policy; increase in mortgage ceilings and mortgage interest relief. These direct results are because of careful state planning and prudent management of the economy,” Minister Rodrigues pointed out.
The $552.9 billion budget, the minister said, was carefully crafted and aligns with the PPP/C’s manifesto and vision for Guyana.
“Our government has managed to find the fiscal space…that term fiscal space came from the former minister of finance, when he said he couldn’t find the fiscal space to continue the cash grant for the school. We have managed to find the fiscal space to present the largest budget without introducing any new taxes.”
This year, the sum of $12.4 billion has been allocated for continued infrastructural development works in housing schemes. This will see a number of allottees being able to access their lands to begin constructing their homes. (Extracted and modified by the Department of Public Information)
