Ghana Home Loans, a specialized mortgage provider in Ghana, and FMO, The Hague-based Dutch Development Bank announced on Monday that they have signed and partially disbursed a $15.5 million long-term facility to Ghana Home Loans. This facility enables Ghana Home Loans to further grow its residential mortgage lending portfolio and improve better access to housing finance for Ghanaians, according to a statement e-mailed to the Ghana News Agency in Accra. FMO’s funding allows Ghana Home Loans to provide both Cedi and US Dollars based loans to Ghanaians to enable them to acquire, complete or improve their homes, the statement said. It said applicants were not required to open a bank account with Ghana Home Loans or participate in any kind of saving scheme before qualifying for a mortgage. Dominic Adu, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Home Loans said: “In light of the worsening global financial crisis, and its consequent negative impact on mortgage funding, we are, especially proud to have raised this long term facility for Ghanaians. It shows investor confidence in our business model and further demonstrates Ghana Home Loans’ commitment to doing all we can to make housing easier and accessible to Ghanaians.” Ruurd Brouwer, Director, Financial Institutions of FMO, said, “The huge gap between demand and supply of affordable housing finance solutions is recognized as one of the biggest challenges in emerging economies. “In these turbulent financial times, FMO remains committed to invest in sustainable business models that deliver these housing solutions. Our long term facility will capacitate Ghana Home Loans to further improve access to housing finance in the Ghanaian market and will enable Ghana Home Loans to introduce new innovative products." Ghana Home Loans is currently the leading mortgage finance institution in Ghana with loan advances and commitments of over USD40 million. Ghana Home Loan's key objective is to leverage information technology and modern mortgage finance techniques to consistently provide Ghanaians with competitively priced long term mortgage finance to facilitate home ownership and to become the pre-eminent mortgage finance institution in Ghana and eventually within the region. Shareholders of Ghana Home Loans include Standard Bank (South Africa), FMO (The Netherlands), Broad Cove Partners (USA), and the Company’s staff. Source: GNA