Egypt's government is aiming to finish building 656,000 socially affordable housing units over the coming two and half years, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced on Wednesday at the launch of a conference on the country’s sustainable development strategy for 2030. The announcement comes as part of the wider social housing programme that was launched by the Housing Ministry in 2014 to construct one million units for low- and medium-income people over five years at a cost of EGP165 billion (USD21 billion). Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Governor, Tarek Amer, said the Housing Ministry signed loans worth EGP10 billion (USD1.3 billion) with local lenders to finance the establishing of 450,000 units. Amer emphasised that banks would provide cheap mortgages over a 20-year period at a 5% decreasing interest rate for those who apply to own a unit from the Ministry’s programme. Early in 2014, the CBE announced the allocation of EGP10 billion to banks nationwide to finance mortgages for people on low and middle incomes. The Housing Ministry has already completed 103,000 units of the whole programme, and started to deliver some of them earlier this month, Ministry spokesman, Hany Younis, told Ahram Online. Younis also said the Ministry is currently working on 250,000 more units, adding that it is planning to sign deals with contractors in April to construct the remaining units. (ahramonline)