The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Monday said that the Nigerian Mortgage Refinancing Company (NMRC) has met the World Bank condition for the drawdown of $250m (N40bn) International Development Association’s grant.
The minister, who said this while speaking at a housing stakeholders’ implementation summit in Abuja, noted that the fulfilment of the condition would kick-start the liquidity facility to be disbursed to the NMRC as Tier 2 capital.
She said the $250m was inclusive of the $300m financing from the World Bank to the Federal Government on very concessionary terms, with $25m earmarked for the establishment of a mortgage guarantee facility for lower income borrowers; and another $25m to support the development and piloting of housing finance microfinance products.
Okonjo-Iweala said, “The NMRC has recorded some significant successes in the first few weeks of its existence: Its initial equity raising exercise was oversubscribed from the original N5bn to N6.75bn deposit for equity from 19 institutional investors, with outstanding firm equity commitments from other institutional investors to subscribe of up to N2bn in additional capital.
“It has also met tough World Bank effectiveness conditions enabling it to begin the drawdown of the $250m IDA credit negotiated by the Federal Government to kick-start the liquidity facility, to be disbursed to the NMRC as Tier 2 Capital based on performance indicators.”
She said with the inauguration of the NMRC in January and its planned take off in June, the key barrier of finance to developing accessible and affordable housing in Nigeria would be removed.
