Stanbic Bank Ghana Launch Diaspora Mortgage in London.

Stanbic bank, the biggest Bank in Africa and one of the fastest growing banks in Ghana has launched a “Diaspora Mortgage”, the first of its kind specially designed for Ghanaians living abroad in London. The new product offers lower interest rates, greater flexibility, and a safer and secure investment opportunity and a more cost effective means of keeping up with mortgage repayments. Speaking at the launch, Ms Anna Owusu-Sekyere, Home Loans Officer at the bank said, the product has been designed after a careful study of other products on the market. She said the Stanbic Diaspora Mortgage can be used for home completion, building of a new home, equity release and for buy-to-let purposes. Further she explained that, the product has no cap on how much an individual can borrow provided their income can support the repayments and can be tailored to meet individual circumstances with the possibility of the bank providing up to 90% mortgage in some cases. Also because of the problems most Ghanaians abroad go through in getting qualified and certified contractors to build their homes for them, our bank works closely with accredited contractors and architects to undertake the building projects ensuring a complete and total peace of mind for the our customers. – Anna said. Also launched at the same event is the Stanbic Heartland Accounts which offers a suite of
banking products to cater for Ghanaians living and working abroad. The account offer a full set of products that allow individuals to send money quickly back home to relatives, manage their money in Ghana, save to build new home or for your children’s education, amongst other things. The accounts can be held in Ghanaian Cedis, USD, EUR, GBP and ZAR. For the Heartland Accounts Customers the bank gives access to a Customer Care Center, full internet banking facilities, and a personal touch through an Executive Banker Service whose duties are to assist the account holders and make their banking experience very convenient and easy. Speaking at the same event, Mr. Alhassan Andani the Chief Executive of the bank appealed to Ghanaians in the Diaspora to take advantage of the facility the bank has put in place and invest in Ghana. Making reference to the first set of estates that were sold by Parakou Estate in 1984 for 4.5million cedis, (GH4, 500.00), he said today those same houses are going for over GH250, 000.00 on the market. He further said the housing market in Ghana appreciates between 14 to 20% annually which provides a good return in investment. He said some companies such as the African development Bank which wanted to relocate to Ghana during the Ivorian crises could not do so because they couldn’t find accommodation for their workers. The event which was coordinated by the Ghana High Commission, UK and held at the premises of the commission’s High-gate offices was chaired by the High Commissioner of Ghana to the UK His Excellency Emmanuel Victor Smith.

Government to setup presidential Taskforce to check Landlords and property owners

Government, will in the next few weeks, institute a presi­dential taskforce to clamp down on landlords and property owners, who charge rent in foreign cur­rencies.

“The major rationale behind the taskforce formation is to en­sure that landlords and property owners do not overcharge their tenants especially in foreign cur­rencies as the practice is contrary to the rent law," a document cited by Business Day had revealed.

Currently, the various stake­holders in the housing sector including Rent Control are mak­ing their final inputs into the document for the formation of the taskforce, whose duty will also include mobilization of rent taxes as part of efforts to improve revenue collection.

The government is hopeful that the new taskforce, when formed, will help the state gen­erate more revenues from land­lords and property owners to salvage the ailing economy.

The rent tax currently stands at eight per cent and landlords and property owners are ex­pected to pay this rate to govern­ment anytime they lease out their properties.

The newspaper reports that a key stakeholder in the tax force implementation said: "the rent law demands that landlords pay rent taxes to the state but due to poor mechaniza­tion and weak revenue mobilisa­tion system on the part of the gov­ernment and state institutions, the state has to lose huge sums of money from this avenue.”

The source continued: “Cur­rently the country is facing eco­nomic hardship due to inad­equate donor support. To this effect, the government has now decided to tax everything and the latest to be enforced is rent tax and landlords are the key targets now.”

The Chief Rent Controller, Addo Soin Dombo in an exclu­sive interview with Business Day confirmed that his outfit had been served with a copy of the proposed documents on the taskforce to enable him make his inputs.

He said issues of rent tax has been in existence for years and that his outfit was the right body to do the collection but lack of personnel and inadequate infra­structures made the Rent Control ineffective.

Source: Myjoyonline.com