Adnan Haider Darwish, General Manager of Oman Housing Bank (OHB), assured that the bank continues to play its leading role in the development of the housing sector in the Sultanate. He also pointed out that the bank focuses on enhancing its efforts at the current stage to reduce the borrower’s waiting period for his/her role through finding suitable solutions. In order to achieve this, the bank recently signed an agreement with Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development worth OMR75.6 million, as well as a joint cooperation agreement with the National Bank of Oman (NBO) in the field of providing finance to citizens wishing to buy or build a house, through Home programme for housing finance. The borrowers can obtain the loan directly without waiting until their turn comes according to the system of OHB, and it will repay the loan balance to the commercial bank. Darwish also mentioned that the number of housing finance agreements that the bank signed with the commercial banks, operating in the Sultanate for the same purpose, reached five.
Darwish added that the recent two agreements signed by the bank will help in accelerating the pace of housing loans provided by OHB to its customers wishing to own a suitable house at the best possible time and best banking and administrative fees, currently available in the local market. This will contribute to achieving the vision of the government, which led by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said. This vision focuses on providing a proper house for Omani citizens.
In a breakdown of the loans approved during the first half of this year, according to the banking and administrative fees on the loan; the bank indicated that the total loans with 1% banking and administrative fees reached 92 loans worth OMR3.4mn, while loans category with a banking and administrative fees with 2%, received the largest percentage of the values of the approved loans reached to 415 loans worth OMR17.4 mn. Whereas the total loans with 3 % banking and administrative fees reached 89 loans worth OMR 4.3 mn, and total loans with 4 % banking and administrative fees reached 34 loans with a total value exceeding OMR 1.76 mn.
It is noteworthy that OHB is continuously working on finding appropriate solutions to reduce the waiting period for loan applicants to obtain financing and also providing banking facilities to national customers according to an appropriate time frame that helps them achieve the dream of owning a suitable home. The maximum housing loan offered by OHB is 60,000 OMR, and the repayment period is up to 25 years at a competitive rate of banking and administrative fees, which is considered the best in the local market.
