THE majority of the country’s housing stock has no title deeds and this has militated against efforts to secure capital due to the absence of collateral, a senior lawyer said last week.
BY VICTORIA MTOMBA
Addressing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at the third SME Banking and Microfinance Summit in Harare on Wednesday, former minister, Paul Mangwana said the country had not fully indigenised as the bulk of the population was still poor.
“Only 5% of housing stock in Zimbabwe has title deeds. The majority of our people have no title deeds and that is why they are poor. 90% of housing stock in Zimbabwe is not titled including growth points. That means all the housing stock is dead capital that is not in circulation. One could have accessed cash against the value of the house,” he said.
Mangwana said SMEs do not think about the value of title deeds and there was need to change focus, to make sure every house in the urban area has a title deed that can be used as collateral to unlock some funding.
“We have a lot of capital in our country. We are poor out of choice. No one is stopping us, even the British and the Americans are not stopping us from having title deeds,” he said.
Mangwana said Harare has 120 000 houses that have no title deeds, Bulawayo (70 000), Chitungwiza (54 000), Chinhoyi (30 000), Chegutu (35 000), Kadoma (40 000) and Masvingo 28 000.
He said the problem is not unique to Zimbabwe but it is an Africa-wide problem.
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Mangwana said the country’s legislation needed to be changed as well, which states that high-density areas will not get title deeds unless they do some developments first.
The country has had two Deeds office since 1980 which were set up before independence for the small population that existed then.
