Around 1,500 residential lots and units will be made available for sale to low- and middle-income earners.
This follows the Fijian Coalition Government’s decision to shelve the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Affordable Housing Project, one of the key announcements made during its cabinet meeting in Suva yesterday.
Initiated in 2017, the project aimed to provide affordable housing units to low- and middle-income households in Fiji. The proposal was to build around 3,000 housing units across six sites: Raiwaqa, Nepani, Wainibuku, Davuilevu, Tavakubu, and Tavua.
Minister for Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad said the Coalition Government had to discontinue the project after discovering that the cost of designing and building the housing units was seven times higher than expected, making them unaffordable for low- and middle-income families, thus “defeating the intention of the project.”
“When the Coalition Government took office in 2022, no substantive progress had been made on the project, and the five sites, though developed, had been lying idle for almost seven years. Despite this, the Coalition Government refused to abruptly halt the project, as it was well-intentioned,” Professor Biman said. “Therefore, we expedited the tender process and called for international bids for a suitable private developer to design and build the affordable housing units. However, after the tender, it was established that the financial cost of the project was seven times higher than the projected 2019 estimates.
“With this pricing structure, there was no business case for the project, as it would have been unaffordable for the target population, defeating the intention of the project.”
The residential lots will be made available through the Housing Authority.
