ZNBS DANGLES K240M MORTGAGES

By BUUMBA CHIMBULUABOUT K240 million worth of mortgage is currently available for the affordable housing programmes under the Zambia National Building Society (ZNBS).The amount is on the mortgage book to be passed on to qualified clients, says ZNBS Director Banking and Mortgage, Malcolm Chabala.Mr Chabala said in an interview that ZNBS was keen on ensuring that Zambians had access to affordable housing.He urged clients to take advantage of the available resources to build affordable houses.“ZNBS is the leading housing financial institution in Zambia so we were primarily set up for the purposes of issuing mortgages to Zambi-an citizens so that we help in the provision of affordable housing“So as we stand at the moment, we have a promotion called the Nyumba Ya Banja since February, as we stand right now, out mortgage book is just under K240 million so it is a reasonably sized mortgage book,” he said.Meanwhile, Mr Chabala said ZNBS had applied for funds from the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) under its Targeted Refinancing Medium Term Facility.The BoZ in April this year set up a K10 billion facility to assist businesses with affordable funds through the financial service providers during the Covid-19 pandemic.Mr Chabala, who could not disclose how much ZNBS had applied for, said the BoZ had approved a certain amount of funds for ZNBS.“As ZNBS we have accessed part of that fund to help our customers who maybe going through some difficulties during this pandemic pe-riod. Suffice to say that we have approval from the BoZ and we have started passing on the relief to our customers.“So we are specifically targeting certain groups, teachers being one of them and Zambia air force, and the Zambia police, these are the ones we are engaging directly with to help and support them,” he said.