Her Excellency Mrs. Amna bint Ahmed Al Rumaihi, Minister of Housing and Urban Planning, confirmed that the policies adopted by the Government of the Kingdom of Bahrain regarding diversifying housing options for citizens, through the Housing Finance Program and the Government Land Development Rights Program, aim to provide an innovative and sustainable housing system capable of keeping pace with population growth. And accommodating the increasing growth rate in the number of housing applications annually, noting that the social housing sector is one of the most prominent components of the social welfare system in the Kingdom.
This came during the discussion panel at the ministerial level in which Her Excellency the Minister of Housing and Urban Planning participated, as part of her participation in the Budapest Demographic Summit, commissioned by His Majesty the King of the country, where she reviewed during the panel discussion the efforts of the Kingdom of Bahrain in providing social support services to Bahraini families, Among them is the provision of housing services for low-income citizens.
During her intervention in the panel discussion, Minister Amna Al-Rumaihi said that the new housing programs aim to provide immediate housing services without lengthy waiting periods, through financing solutions that are characterized by diversity, and give the citizen the necessary flexibility to choose the type, area, and location of his housing service, in addition to the projects provided by the Ministry in partnership with... The private sector through the government land development rights program, which contributes to increasing the supply of housing units at prices commensurate with the value of the financing granted to citizens. The projects of this program, along with the projects provided by real estate development companies, contribute to increasing and diversifying the supply of units, lands, and apartments to citizens.
The Minister added that these options go in parallel with the efforts to develop the five housing cities that the government is currently working on, which are witnessing the implementation of various housing projects and advanced infrastructure projects, in addition to plans to provide community, educational, and health facilities, in coordination with the relevant authorities. This aims to provide the necessities of a decent living for families residing in those cities and their visitors.
Minister Al-Rumaihi said that the Kingdom of Bahrain has been able, since the beginning of the housing process in the 1960s, to provide more than 150,000 housing services to citizens with limited income, and the lists of beneficiaries of these services included various categories of citizens, who benefited from them in addition to families consisting of the head of the family and the wife. Children, categories of divorced women, widows with minor children, and orphaned, abandoned, and single women, noting that the Ministry has provided housing services to more than 5,000 Bahraini women, which reflects the comprehensiveness of housing support directed to citizens with limited income.
The Minister reviewed the government efforts that were made to implement the royal directive of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of the country, to provide 40,000 housing units, a directive that was announced in March of the year 2022 to be actually completed, in a new gain added to the gains of the sector. Social housing in the comprehensive development process in the Kingdom.
The Minister touched on the new era witnessed by the housing sector in the Kingdom, represented by the government’s tendency to provide immediate housing services to citizens, through the housing financing program and the government land development rights program, and the results achieved by these initiatives that exceeded expectations during a period not exceeding one year, as the funds met... Thousands of immediate requests from citizens, with an unprecedented diversity of financing purposes that were met by citizens.
The Minister added that efforts to provide housing services to citizens are continuing, and the government aspires to have the largest possible number of citizens benefit from housing services through the newly developed immediate programs, noting in this regard that the government recently allocated the largest budget to the social housing sector for the years 2023-2024, amounting to $1.6 billion. With a greater role being given to partnerships with the private sector to provide housing services to citizens.
It is worth noting that the discussion session witnessed the participation of the Minister of Culture and Innovation, the Minister of State for Family Affairs of the Republic of Hungary, the Minister of Family Welfare of the Republic of Serbia, the Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services of the Republic of Turkey, the Minister of Social Development and Family of the State of Qatar, the Minister of State of the United Arab Emirates, and the Minister of Family. Women, Children and the Elderly in the Republic of Tunisia, in addition to the Minister of State for Nutrition Affairs in the Republic of Ecuador, the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of the Republic, the Chairman of the National Committee for Women’s Rights, Family and Demographic Policy in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the former Minister of Family Affairs in the Republic of Slovenia.
