The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) defended its 2024 budget projections before the National Assembly Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Development on Thursday, December 14, 2023.
The leadership of the FMBN was invited by the committee, which consists of the House Committee on Housing and Habitat and the Senate Committee on Land, Housing, and Urban Development, to defend its budget proposal for the fiscal year 2024 and provide an update on the budget performance for the previous year.
Mr. Hamman Madu, Managing Director of FMBN, evaluated the bank’s performance in relation to the 2023 budget and made projections about the bank’s success for the upcoming year. Despite structural and budgetary constraints, Hamman said that the bank made a concerted effort within the time frame and with the resources at hand to meet its mission of providing affordable homes to low- and middle-class Nigerians.
According to the budget details for 2024, formal, informal, and diaspora collections for the National Housing Fund (NHF) are expected to total N162 billion, compared to N135 billion in 2023. This comes after the Honourable Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Arc. Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, recently introduced the Diaspora Mortgage Scheme.
The Managing Director listed a number of challenges to providing affordable housing to Nigerians, including high rates of inflation and the ensuing rising cost of building materials, currency depreciation, a high degree of insecurity surrounding construction activities, slow economic growth, and stagnant household income.
Despite these obstacles, the head of FMBN reaffirmed the bank’s dedication to achieving its goals for the 2024 budget in accordance with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Agenda.” He urged the committee to get involved in the bank’s recapitalization efforts.
“We would like to request that the Committee propose that the bank be infused with more capital since our regulator, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has informed us that the bank’s present capital base is insufficient for a development finance institution. The bank might not be able to function in the financial industry without the recapitalization strategy that the CBN has requested that we provide, he added.
In response to the Managing Director’s budget defence and request for approval of the budget and consideration of recapitalization, Aminu Balele, the Chairman of the House Committee on Housing and Habitat, praised the Managing Director for providing a thorough and convincing presentation. He gave the FMBN his word that the Committees will work together to resolve the concerns brought up anduphold the FMBN’s standard of excellence.
