Tanzania: Land bank in pipeline

THE government will establish the land bank to facilitate protection of land and make it easily available for investment purposes.

Moving the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development budget estimates for 2011/12, Minister Anna Tibaijuka, said the move seeks to avoid conflicts among investors and villagers.

It will also enable people in the area to benefit from land resource at the same time enhance sustainability of extensive land-based investments, the minister told the National Assembly.


She said under the new arrangement, villagers would have shares in the invested land but under invested value method of land valuation.

Shares and profit will be shared among the investors, relevant district council and the central government.

She said a bill for the establishment of the bank would be tabled in the House after completion of necessary preparations.

The minister also said that the government would establish Land Compensation Fund to be used for compensating parties moved from their land for national development projects.

Prof Tibaijuka appealed to communities to establish Housing Cooperatives to use them for seeking loans for purchase or building houses.

"Housing cooperatives are crucial in enabling low income earners and the poor get houses at a reasonable rate," she told the House.

She said the ministry would in this financial year complete preparation of a policy for the establishment and supervision of the housing co-operatives to be printed and distributed to stakeholders.

In line with this, Prof Tibaijuka said the government will boost the Tanzania Mortgage Refinancing Compay (TMRC) to enable it finance banks and other financial institutions which will in turn provide loans to people to construct or buy houses at a reasonable interest rate.

She said by June this year, several banks including the Tanzania Investment Bank, Azania Bancorp, Exim Bank, National Microfinance Bank, CRDB and Dar es Salaam Community Bank had bought shares in TMRC.

He said the government was collecting data on housing with the view to improve policies and strategies to have more investments and lure investors in the housing sector.

The minister said more investors would be lured to invest in the housing sector with view to sell to the people, but the government will continue to support the National Housing Corporation (NHC) to enable it take the leading role in construction of houses and sell the units.

At the moment, she said, NHC only catered for 0.45 per cent of its clients and plans to build about 15,000 house units in the next five years.

She said the corporation was charging house rent at 24 per cent of market rate and plans were going on to raise charges up to at least 85 per cent by 2015.

Opposition Shadow Minister Halima Mdee, questioned massive allocation of land to retired government leaders including former president Benjamin Mkapa.

The ministry asked for 47.8bn/- for recurrent and development expenditure.