Morocco will invest 60 billion dirhams ($ 7.5 billion) in low cost housing in 2010-2020 as part of efforts aiming to reduce the deficit to 700,000 units by 2015, Housing minister Ahmed Taoufiq Hejira said.
The government has also taken a series of measures to promote the low-cost housing sector, such as lower housing income and lower prices of units, the minister said at a meeting in the northern city of Tangiers.
The government announced in 2008 a scheme to build an additional 130,000 social housing units by 2012, for an estimated value of 15.5 billion dirhams ($ 1.9 billion).
Within the framework of this low-cost housing programme, the Al Omrane Group, Morocco’s state-owned real estate company, broke ground in 2008 on 22,000 units, and committed to build another 129,000 residences, with a maximum sales price of 140,000 dirham ($ 17,000) in the coming four years.
These programmes are the latest in a series of national housing plans aimed at providing homes for Morocco’s low-income families. In 2004, the government launched Cities Without Slums programme (Villes Sans Bidonvilles, VSB) 21.4bn dirham ($ 2.7 bn), which is looking to shift some 280,000 households from the shantytowns into permanent residences. (MAP)
