ECD new hotspot for residential lands, no new lands available on EBD

…over 63,000 active house lot application pending

As the Guyana Government pushes its aggressive housing development, there has been a clamour for land along the coastland and in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), this has resulted in a saturation of house lots on the East Bank of Demerara thus forcing current distribution of lands only on the East Coast corridor.
This was revealed by Housing Minister Collin Croal on Wednesday at the Ministry’s closing press conference for 2023.

He noted that while there were lands available on the East Coast of Demerara for new developments, the aggressive housing drive by the ministry has seen some areas such as the East Bank corridor being left with no new areas.
“Our recent allocations within the last year or year and half for Region Four has been on the East Coast. That is because on the East Bank of Demerara, we have allocated or we have reached to the saturation point of our available lands on the East Bank of Demerara. So, all of the allocations you have been seeing ongoing are for East Coast of Demerara lands,” the Housing Minister noted.
Despite this, however, Croal is confident of acquiring more lands to push the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government’s manifesto promise of delivering 50,000 house lots in five years.
“In terms of finding land, we are very confident… We have also to come on stream to support our funding, the access through the Saudi Arabia funding and that is going through its evaluation stage in terms of its technical side, and then we’ll be able to fast track even more infrastructure work to enhance new areas for persons to access,” the Housing Minister told reporters.
Back in June 2023, Guyana signed a historic US$150 million loan with the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) to finance a number of transformational infrastructural projects in the country.
The first project signed, to the tune of US$100 million, involves infrastructural development and works for the housing sector, that is, developing the infrastructure to provide about 2500 housing units, across three different regions in Guyana.
The Housing Minister posited that efforts were underway to develop new housing areas across Guyana. In Region Three, the Wales Development Zone will drive the Region Three housing development. He added, too, there were developments for housing programmes in the hinterland regions, including Regions One (Barima-Waini), Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), Eight (Potaro-Siparuni), Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).
It was reported during Wednesday’s press conference that Government has acquired some 51 new areas for housing development since taking office in 2020.

Land allocation in 2023
In 2023, some 7128 house lots were allocated in Region Four and according to Minister Croal, the majority of these were distributed along the East Coast corridor.
Last year, in total, some 8578 residential plots were allocated across Guyana. Some 1079 house lots were distributed in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), 125 in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) and 192 in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).
Apart from residential lands, the Housing Ministry also allocated 181 plots of land for commercial/industrial use as well as regularised 860, taking the total land distribution last year to 9612 lots. This, according to Minister Croal, is 32 per cent of the total allocations by the PPP/C Government since taking office.
Over the past three years, some 30,468 plots of land were allocated. These include 28,368 residential lots through the “Dream Realised” initiative; 659 commercial and industrial lots as well as 1445 regularised lots.
Meanwhile, Minister within the Housing Ministry, Susan Rodrigues, disclosed that over the last three years, there has been a consistent 40 per cent allocation of house lots exclusively to women. This number peaked last year at 43 per cent.
Low, moderate, and middle-income earners accounted for 90 per cent of the total allocations.
“That is in keeping with the objective of the housing programme, that is to ensure that affordable housing is provided to all Guyanese,” Rodrigues stated.
Minister Croal further highlighted that youth were significant beneficiaries, with individuals aged 35 years and under receiving 15,119 house lots. This constitutes 53.3 per cent of all allottees since 2020.
The senior Housing Minister went on to note that there were 70,000 pending applications in the system when the current Administration took office in 2020. He noted that while this figure has been reduced over the past three years, the backlog continues to build with new applications. In fact, under the PPP/C Government, there have been 13,000 new applications in the system.
Currently, as it stands, there are 80,000 plus applications in the system but only 63,032 are active. He explained that the Ministry does not remove the dormant applications from the system. (G8)