Government has begun negotiations with mortgage providers to increase the repayment tenure of mortgages from twenty to forty years.

Deputy Finance Minister, John Kumah, says the intervention will ensure flexible payment terms while making mortgages attractive to resident Ghanaians.

"We are looking at how to extend the years beyond 20 years going forward, especially for our young graduates who have just started working.

"They could be given mortgages for up to 40 years so that the monthly repayment will be minimal and encourage more young people to have access to these schemes," he said.

He added that the "government is so much committed and all these interventions will help stimulate the economy".

Mr John Kumah further noted that part of the intervention is drastically reducing interest rates on mortgages from 24% to 12%.

"At the moment, mortgages contribute for only 0.5% of our GDP. However, if you compare to elsewhere, we are far behind the average, so the government is coming up with a number of initiatives to ensure that housing is made available to everybody in Ghana".

"At the moment, even the market rate is 24%, the government has been able to introduce a new scheme and reduced it to 12% from the mortgage financing scheme," he disclosed.

The deputy minister was addressing a training workshop on the National Mortgage and Housing Finance Initiative Koforidua.

The National Mortgage and Housing Finance Initiative, launched in 2018, will help address the challenges of residential homeownership and stimulate the mortgage market.

The government set up the National Housing and Mortgage Fund (NHMF) to pilot two schemes, namely, the National Mortgage Scheme and the Affordable Housing Real Estate Investment Trust scheme.

With support from the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) through the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development, the ministry of finance rolls out the three-day workshop to build the capacity of finance and housing ministries to manage the schemes effectively.

In his speech, Programme Manager of GIZ Programme for Sustainable Economic Development, Ghana, Detlev Jahn, attributed Ghana's housing deficit of an estimated two million housing units to inadequate financing for the mortgage, complex land tenure challenges, high cost of land among others.