MARTIN MAWAYA
GWERU-National Building Society (NBS) is on the rebound as its capitalization increased to US$20 million from US$3 million, the bank’s managing director, Tapera Mushoriwa has said.
In 2021 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe set the capital threshold for building societies at US$20 million for compliance.
In an interview with The Midweek Watch on the sidelines of stakeholder engagement meeting held in Gweru last week, Mushoriwa said the bank performed strongly and doubled its profit as a result of strong market confidence.
“The bank performed strongly in 2022. It has doubled in terms of profitability. The financial numbers on month on month are showing very strong growth, that’s why we are coming out to look for projects because we have capacity, we are liquid,” he said.
He said the NSSA subsidiary’s outlook is brighter, hence engaging the local authorities as important strategic alliances on its vision to deliver decent housing at low cost.
Currently the country housing backlog is around 1.5 million units and the government trough National Development Strategy 1 envision to deliver 220 000 housing units by 2025.
Mushoriwa added that the building society is very kin to partner with the City of Gweru to reduce housing backlog.
“One of our strategies is to partner with local authorities because as you know, the local authorities have got state land which is cheaper. We want people to be able to afford to own a home.
“This sits well with our vision, ‘affordable housing and financial services’ and we believe as much as we want profit, we can also do it with care to the low-income community.
“Gweru as the city of progress has so much potential. We can either equip them with necessary equipment or yellow machinery that can allow them to do on site and off-site housing projects or they can actually give us land and we build the houses and reduce the backlog,” said Mushoriwa.
He said the financial institution will in June this year launch a rent to buy housing scheme targeting the informal sector.
Mushoriwa highlighted that the Private Public Partnership with local business people will go a long way in utilizing the dormant land.
“We want to partner with business people who are holding dormant land so that we can help them to unlock capital for their business and coming generations while at the same time reducing the housing backlog,” added Mushoriwa.
