THE Minister for Land and Human Settlement, Deogratius Ndejembi, has called on the National Housing Corporation (NHC), to put in place solid strategies that will enable it to build affordable houses that many Tanzanians with low incomes can afford to buy.

He said this yesterday when he visited the corporation's offices in Dar es Salaam where he talked with the corporation management and employees about strategic plans to make it continue to make profits.

"The corporation is doing well, it is making good profits and the director has maintained the good status of the corporation, but let's not forget the goal of its establishment in 1962 was to provide affordable housing for Tanzanians, so we should not forget them in our strategic plans," he said.

"The vision of the father of the nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was to make sure that we enable Tanzanians to achieve their dreams of owning a house by building them houses that they can afford to buy and to make sure that the houses themselves have good standards and are located in accessible areas and not outside the cities," he said.

The Minister said that NHC should ensure that projects have value for money by adding quality to the implementation of their daily activities, including the establishment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems.

Ndejembi said that even when they buy land, they should make sure they buy it at the current value and avoid brokers who can sell it to them at a price that is not in the market and cause loss to the corporation.

"There should be a real cost in the purchase of land so you don't find that you are being sold at a very high cost because there are people who can raise the cost for their own interests, but you have worked hard and I congratulate you for many projects like that of Samia Housing in Kawe, five thousand houses is not a joke," he said.

He also asked the NHC to continue building houses for rent and sale in many areas of the country, especially in areas where they see that they will benefit from the investment they will make.

 The Director General of NHC, Hamad Abdallah, said that NHC's capital has continued to grow and has now reached 5.16trn/- compared to last year's 5.04trn/-.

He mentioned one of the reasons for capital growth as the completion of construction projects and the value of the company's assets increasing the profit of 28.6bn/-while the funds collected from the sale of new houses reached 13.1bn/-.

Abdalah said that for the fiscal year 2023/24, NHC planned to earn a profit before tax of 28bn/- and in the period of July 2023 to June 2024, the corporation had earned a profit before tax of 42.2bn/, equal to 147 percent of the goals.

He said the corporation has successfully paid various government taxes amounting to 30.2b/- in July 2023 and June 2024.

Abdalah said the corporation continues to search for low-cost land in various areas of the country and uses technology that reduces the cost of construction materials.

He said NHC continues to communicate with water, electricity, and road authorities to put infrastructure in construction areas as a strategy to reduce construction costs.