Parliamentary Committee on State-Owned Enterprises has approved the motion to ban state-owned companies from conducting social housing projects.
The committee members voted unanimously for the motion at the 56th committee meeting this year. The committee formulated its report on the projects conducted by state-owned companies to provide housing to their employees after meeting with senior officials of the Ministry of National Planning, Housing, and Infrastructure and the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).
The committee members had also toured the sites of the various housing projects.
In the report, the committee stated the housing projects have restricted the cash flow of the companies and have made it a challenge to fulfill the company mandates. Therefore, the committee recommended that the government not hand over housing projects to state-owned companies and stated it would be more beneficial to the state and the public if the housing projects were conducted by construction companies. It further stated that handing over housing projects to a company that does not have a primary function of constructing housing projects will impact the company's revenue generation and inflate its debt and negatively impact its liquidity ratio in the long term.
Additionally, the committee urged the state-owned companies to better manage their finances and called on the government to solve the issues of some housing projects that have yet to begin fieldwork. The committee noted that HDC has leased land to 15 companies to conduct housing projects but that work began at only six sites. Therefore, it recommended HDC to take back the land in which the projects have yet to begin and for the government to sell the apartments that are left vacant after all employees of the state-owned companies receive their units.