“For reconstruction… soft loans from the Housing Bank”

The Chairman and General Manager of the Housing Bank, Antoine Habib, visited the Speaker of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, last night in Ain el-Tineh, to congratulate him on the formation of the government, and to brief him on the atmosphere of his tour in Qatar to secure housing loans for Lebanese with limited and medium incomes, and loans for the reconstruction of homes damaged by the Israeli war on Lebanon.

Habib said: “After our visit to the President of the Republic in the afternoon at Baabda Palace, we headed to Ain el-Tineh to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri and informed him of the proposals we put forward during our recent meetings in Qatar, which stipulate that the Qatar Development Fund finance loans for people with limited and medium incomes, and that the loan ceiling could reach 100,000 US dollars, to be repaid over 20 years, with the value of the funding from the fund being 300 million US dollars distributed equally over 6 years, with each annual payment amounting to 50 million dollars.”

He added, “As for reconstruction, we discussed during our meetings in Doha that the value of the loan in the first phase could range between 10,000 and 50,000 US dollars to rebuild partially damaged housing units, with repayment to be made over a period of 15 years with a grace period of 24 months.”

He continued, “As for the second phase of granting loans to destroyed housing units, we are waiting for the official and local authorities to complete the survey of residential and infrastructure damages so that the necessary measures can be taken, noting that the value of the funding allocated for the first phase amounts to $100 million to be spent over five years, distributed over $20 million annually. It has been decided that a delegation from the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs will visit Lebanon to discuss the details and study the support mechanism that will be implemented through the Qatar National Bank, which has expressed its readiness to open the necessary accounts in the name of the Housing Bank.”

On the other hand, Habib was informed by Speaker Berri during the meeting that “he gave his instructions to the Parliament Police to open the roads of Nejmeh Square in Beirut to pedestrians currently, with the aim of opening them later to cars. Berri hoped that restaurants and commercial establishments would reopen their doors in the area and stimulate the economic wheel there.”