Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says government is taking steps to develop Ghana’s fledgling mortgage industry to make home financing affordable to the citizens and offset the current housing deficit.

He said the country had a housing deficit of 1.7 million because the mortgage industry had not been developed to offer affordable financing for housing and infrastructure construction.

Dr. Bawumia said this when he inaugurated the Construction Bank Ghana Limited in Accra on Wednesday.

The bank, coming at an opportune time in the evolving construction landscape in Ghana, will primarily provide funding and transactional banking services to customers in construction.

It will also assist organisations and individuals to acquire homes and commercial properties and offer personal, business, corporate and investment banking services.

Vice President Dr. Bawumia said the commencement of operations of the Bank was a positive outcome for the construction industry and commended the owners for that bold step.

He said the launch of the bank was strategic because that investment would provide employment opportunities for Ghanaians and urged its directors and management to learn from the experience that led to the collapse of the erstwhile Bank for Housing and Construction, the first of such banks in Ghana.

Dr. Bawumia said Government would provide the necessary support to enable the bank to thrive, saying; “We want to see this bank growing from strength to strength.”

Government, he said, was working to guarantee the viability of the mortgage and construction industry in Ghana to bridge the housing and infrastructure gap.

The Vice President said with the changing nature of the country’s housing landscape, the issue of land titling and property registration had become a challenge, contributing to the underdevelopment of the mortgage sector.

He said government was “putting plans in place to have all properties in the country registered.”

The Minister of Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea, expressed joy at the birth of a banking institution solely dedicated to the construction industry and said the ministry now had a partner that would help reduce the housing deficit in the country.

The First Deputy Governor the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Millison Narh, asked the Bank to help change the trend in the country where housing had remained a big challenge for years.

He asked the Board of Governors to make the bank an institution that would promote the growing importance of the construction sector of the economy.

The Board Chairman, Dr. Asare Akuffo, said the Bank was joining the financial services sector with a unique and cutting-edge perspective of being the only commercial bank in Ghana providing a comprehensive range of commercial banking products and services specific to the construction community.

He said it would invest in innovations and technology to secure phenomenal growth that would capture the needs of its clientele across the key markets of Ghana.