Looking for an affordable house?

By
anjum
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6
135

The House Building Finance Company Limited – HBFCL with its vision to be the prime housing finance institution of the country participated in the “Pakistan’s Housing Construction Conference” held today at a local hotel in Karachi. The objective of the conference was to address the ever growing housing shortage in the country and to discuss issues faced by the construction industry. Speaking at the conference the Chief Executive Officer of HBFCL, Azhar A. Jaffri said, “Real estate, housing and construction industry plays a vital role in development of the economy of a country and can provide employment opportunity to millions. I earnestly hope that the participants of this conference will pledge to cooperate to provide affordable housing to citizens of Pakistan.” Discussing the growing housing shortage in the country the CEO further added, “There are 60-70 other industries linked with housing sector. By addressing the challenges facing the housing and construction industry can give a boost to more than 60 allied industries linked with housing.” A comprehensive transformation is currently underway at HBFCL with the aim to bring new reforms in almost every section of the organization. Exceptional progress has been made in implementing the transformation strategy and substantial progress is evident. The conference was organized by ‘Investment & Marketing’ a 45 year old company that has a record of organizing conferences on vital sectors of Pakistan’s economy including agriculture, aviation, banking, shipping, pharmaceuticals, etc. Some of the prominent speakers at the conference were Senator Syed Mustafa Kamal (former City Nazim), Arif Habib, Chairman Saiban Tasneem Siddiqui, S.M. Muneer, Shahid Feroz and and Dr Kaiser Bengali. The House Building Finance Company Limited (‘HBFCL”) is an unlisted Public Limited Company. Its Vision is “to be the prime housing finance institution of the country, providing affordable housing solutions to low and middle income groups of population by encouraging new constructions in small & medium housing (SMH) sector.”

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Pakistan, unfortunately, is such a country where people can say something and do something totally opposite! The adage of "difference in words and deeds" is very prominent in Pakistan than in any other country.

    The same can be very loudly seen in the above mentioned news piece, particularly by those who by any chance visited any of the HBFCL's outlet in the last three years. During the period of Mr. Azhar Abbas Jaffri, who is very loudly making tall claims and big statements above, reduced the year-wise average loaning to about 20-30% of HBFCL's own loan giving capacity. Thus depriving many people from getting houses of their own with the help of the Government whose catchy slogan is "roti, kapra aur MAKAN"! Mr. Jaffri reduced the yearly loaning to about 700 million per year, while before him HBFC used to disburse 3500-4000 million per year.

    Mr. Jaffri's HBFCL created all sorts of funny and queer impediments in providing housing finance assistance to the common people. These are all in the notice of the Government and State Bank, who are the two shareholders of this organization. Mr. Azhar Abbas Jaffri now claims, in a cosy atmosphere of some conference, that 60-70 industries are linked with housing, but he obviously forgot this statistics in his full three years of running the government owned housing institution, slashed the loaning on one pretext or the other, stashed the money in money market to earn easy profit, which was not HBFCL's business. All these can be seen from Mr. Azhar Jaffri's own published annual reports. Will the government and other stake-holders also see this? Or will they be mislead by such misleading news reports as given above?

  2. The worthy proclaimed CEO, Syed Azhar Abbas Jaffri, claims in his above interview that, "A comprehensive transformation is currently underway at HBFCL with the aim to bring new reforms in almost every section of the organization." TRANSFORMATION IS CURRENTLY UNDERWAY? How long will he carry on this so-called transformation? Will any day come in his life, or even in this century, when the real work of HBFCL will start? Who he is making fool – the staff of HBFC, the Government, the Ministry, the State Bank?

  3. No doubt HBFCL is a prime Housing Finance Institution of Pakistan. It has been called "Friend of Middle man"Unfortunately HBFCL ,now, is not in the hands of people who know about housing and housing finance. HBFCL has now been converted in an investment company and usually places its funds in banks depriving the people of PAKISTAN TO AVAIL HOUSING LOANS. Government should think about this institution and a professional Managing Director having vision about housing and with good administrative experience should be appointed.

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