Her Excellency Mrs. Amna bint Ahmed Al Rumaihi, Minister of Housing and Urban Planning, confirmed that the new programs launched by the Ministry in partnership with the private sector have contributed to intensifying the pace of providing housing services and accelerating the fulfillment of housing requests, in order to achieve the required balance with the volume of housing requests received by the Ministry annually.
The Minister said that housing financing has been able to achieve positive results on the social and economic levels, by providing housing for thousands of Bahraini families since its launch in the third quarter of 2022, noting that requests to benefit from housing financing come at the forefront of housing services in terms of citizens’ demand for them. , as a result of the diversity it provided in terms of different financing purposes, and that the majority of requests that are met are from citizens whose requests are listed for other services, and who prefer the faster path to obtaining housing immediately.
The Minister also pointed out the role of the Government Land Development Rights Program in providing housing services to citizens, through real estate development companies implementing housing projects on government lands, and offering them to citizens who benefit from financing services at prices commensurate with the value of the funds, noting the success of the pilot version of the program represented by the “Project” Suhail Housing, which saw 93% of its units sold out when the project was launched in the second edition of the Housing Finance Exhibition, which encouraged the Ministry to expand the implementation of the projects included in the program plan.
In this regard, Minister Al-Rumaihi added that the Ministry recently signed an agreement to implement 131 housing units in Salman City in cooperation with the private sector, and also invited bids for the implementation of the Al-Buhair and Horatah Sanad projects, and the next phase will witness additional expansion, with the aim of providing more options and flexibility for citizens to obtain housing. Their housing service as quickly as possible.
This came during the dialogue session in which Her Excellency Mrs. Amna bint Ahmed Al Rumaihi, Minister of Housing and Urban Planning participated, and which comes within the sessions of the “Future of Real Estate” forum hosted by the Ministry of Rural and Municipal Affairs and Housing in the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the participation of an elite group of officials and specialists in the field of the social housing sector. And real estate at the local, regional and international levels, where His Excellency Mr. Mohammed Al-Bati, CEO of the National Housing Company, and His Excellency Mr. Qusai Al-Fakhri, CEO of the Saudi Tourism Development Fund, participated in the dialogue session.
During the session, the Minister of Housing and Urban Planning reviewed the efforts to provide housing services to citizens in the Kingdom, through housing financing pathways and the government land development rights program, in addition to completing the implementation of projects in housing cities, and the results achieved in this regard.
The Minister also touched on government efforts to preserve urban heritage, by highlighting the most prominent aspects of the Muharraq City Development Project, which is currently being implemented in coordination with many ministries, government agencies, and private sector companies and institutions, and aims to revive and develop the well-known neighborhoods in the Governorate. Muharraq covers an area of up to 1.4 million square metres, and includes building and renovating residential units, unifying the architectural facades according to the authentic Bahraini engineering style, and then returning citizens to live in their areas.
During the session, she praised the efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in the field of providing housing services to citizens, and integration between the Council countries through the exchange of experiences and training, especially in the field of partnership with the private sector to provide social housing services, in light of the Council countries’ direction to develop these initiatives and expand during the next stage.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Planning participated in the opening session of the Real Estate Future Forum in Riyadh, which witnessed the presence of a number of senior officials related to the housing and real estate sectors. She also witnessed the opening of the accompanying exhibition in which a large number of real estate companies participated.
