In its bid to meet the financial need of higher and medium income earners as well as address the challenges of higher construction, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has increased its loan limit from N15 million to N50 million.
The Managing Director of the FMBN, Shehu Usman Osidi, made this disclosure in his presentation during an oversight visit by the House of Representatives Committee on Housing and Habitat at the headquarters of the Bank, in Abuja on Monday.
Osidi, who called on Nigerians to take advantage of the new window and key into the nation’s housing programmes, also said the current management of FMBN led by him, has achieved an operational surplus of N4.9billion in the first half of the year through their deliberate strategy and financial reengineering.
While calling for the review of the National Housing Fund (NHF) Act, Osidi decried that the major challenges of the Bank were the shortage of funding and high volume of non-performing loans. He, however, boasted that the FMBN has set up a loan recovery task teams that were aggressively improving the Bank’s loan portfolio as well as reducing non-performing loans (NPLs).
The Managing Director added that estate development loans has sadly over the years been the highest in terms of non-performing loans and revealed that over 12 years ago there was a ministerial embargo placed on that category of loan to reduce the NPLs portfolio.
The House of Representatives Committee on Housing and Habitat was led by its chairman, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin Kofa, representing Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency of Kano State.
