A FORMER Minister of Finance, Dr Kwame Donkor-Fordjour, has suggested to the government to give tax reliefs to Ghanaians abroad who may wish to buy houses and other property in the country.

He said that would encourage many Ghanaians abroad to come home and buy houses and other property and, consequently, help increase foreign remittances.

Dr Donkor-Fordjour made the suggestion in Accra yesterday, at the launch of Property Express, a bi-monthly magazine which focuses on housing industry. The magazine is published by the Ghana Real Estates Developers Association (GREDA).

Dr Donkor-Fordjour said between 80 and 90 per cent of foreign remittances went into property acquisition. This was because most people wanted to own property.

He noted with satisfaction that the bulk of the remittances went into property acquisition and not the consumption sector, adding that channelling such inflows into the consumption sector would not be good for the country.

He said housing was the biggest industry that brought huge income to the country and, therefore, underlined the need for the government to introduce incentives that would encourage greater patronage of the industry.

The Executive Director of GREDA, Mr William Opare, who launched the magazine, said statistics had shown that only five per cent of Ghanaians could personally acquire houses and that the majority of the people needed some form of assistance to do so.

He said it was important to provide information for those people who needed assistance so that they would also be able to acquire houses and the magazine, he said, was intended to serve that need.

The Managing Director of Property Express, Mr Robert Wegbe, said it was important to feed the public with the right information and pointed out that the magazine would endeavour to serve that need of the property industry for the benefit of Ghanaians home and abroad.

He hinted that there were plans to publish a French version of the magazine in the near future to serve the Francophone community as well.