PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Many years af­ter it was pro­posed, and over $3 bil­lion worth of col­lab­o­ra­tive hous­ing loans lat­er, the merg­er of T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance (TTMF) and Home Mort­gage Bank (HMB) to cre­ate the T&T Mort­gage Bank (TTMB) has of­fi­cial­ly been fi­nalised.

At the of­fi­cial launch which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the merg­er rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for those seek­ing home own­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from low to mid­dle-in­come back­grounds as it would “pro­pel them from be­ing renters at the mer­cy of land­lords to proud own­ers of their own cas­tles”.

The merg­er had been first sug­gest­ed 12 years ago and was agreed to by the com­pa­nies’ re­spec­tive boards three years ago.

“This im­por­tant merg­er, un­der­tak­en by a se­ri­ous Gov­ern­ment, will al­low cit­i­zens to use this fa­cil­i­ty to find vi­able in­vest­ments, mort­gage so­lu­tions, and fi­nanc­ing for com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment, en­hanc­ing cit­i­zens’ qual­i­ty of life,” Im­bert added.

The fi­nance min­is­ter ex­plained that even be­fore the merg­er be­came of­fi­cial, the two com­pa­nies had col­lab­o­rat­ed to the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens search­ing for home own­er­ship op­tions.

“Since col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTMF and the HMB be­gan in 2017, they have com­bined to cre­ate amenable, af­ford­able of­fer­ings that demon­strate their fo­cus on the well-be­ing of cit­i­zens, urg­ing them to ac­com­plish their long-cher­ished am­bi­tion of prop­er­ty own­er­ship.

“Over the last five years, the TTMF and HMB pro­vid­ed home ac­qui­si­tion and im­prove­ment loans in the amount of $3.4 bil­lion, of which $2.2 bil­lion was is­sued un­der the af­ford­able hous­ing pro­gramme,” Im­bert added.

He al­so not­ed the com­ple­tion of the merg­er as well as the re­cent sod-turn­ing to com­mence con­struc­tion of 291 homes at two sites; the old CGA com­pound on the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille, and Cau­ra Val­ley, El Do­ra­do were great in­di­ca­tors that af­ford­able hous­ing op­tions were on the way.

“Through the ad­vance of funds by the Home Mort­gage Bank (HMB) to the HDC se­cured by mort­gages from TTMF, as of De­cem­ber 31, 2023, the to­tal ad­vanced over the last few years is $470 mil­lion.

“In pre­sent­ing the 2024 na­tion­al bud­get, I pro­posed as­sist­ing the HDC in ac­cess­ing a fur­ther $700 mil­lion loan fi­nanc­ing to ac­cel­er­ate its hous­ing con­struc­tion pro­gramme. This, added to the $1.5 bil­lion al­ready giv­en to the HDC over the last nine months to set­tle debts owed to con­trac­tors, restart stalled projects and ini­ti­ate new green­field projects, will al­low the com­ple­tion of con­struc­tion of hun­dreds of hous­ing units and al­low for the ini­ti­a­tion of con­struc­tion of hun­dreds of more hous­ing units. We have al­ready seen the ben­e­fits of the merg­er,” Im­bert de­tailed.

The fi­nance min­is­ter al­so stood in for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the event, who could not make it af­ter tour­ing the Men­to Plat­form at Trinidad Off­shore Fab­ri­ca­tors Un­lim­it­ed yard in La Brea ear­li­er on Wednes­day.

Patrick Fer­reira, chair­man of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), the TTMB said the merg­er would now give more cit­i­zens an av­enue to gen­er­a­tional wealth through home own­er­ship.

“The merg­er with Home Mort­gage Bank af­fords us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­tain fund­ing at low­er rates that will im­prove our mort­gage pric­ing and en­able us to bet­ter com­pete for the mort­gage busi­ness,” Fer­reira added.