The State Housing Company (SHC) Limited is set to pay GH₵1.3million as dividend to the government for the first time in more than 30years,
This follows the company’s declaration of more than GH₵37million as profit after tax for the year 2023.
The Managing Director of the SHC, Mr Kwabena Ampofo Appiah, disclosed this at the maiden Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company held in Accra yesterday.
Briefing journalists at the end of the meeting, he stated that the company had made great strides over the last seven years, moving from a loss making entity to the position of profitability.
He said the GH₵37million represented more than 380 per cent increase over profit of GH₵7million recorded in 2017, stressing that, “In 2017 our profit was GH₵7million and that was my first year as the MD of State Housing.
Mr Appiah Ampofo stressed that the success being witnessed by the company was largely due to the hard work of management and staff of the company.
“Our staff put in extra hours. They work really hard, sometimes weekends and overnights, just to make sure that the company comes to a sound footing. So I would put it more on hard work than magic,” he emphasised.
The Managing Director also noted that the company was poised to working towards one of the giants in terms of real estate on the African Continent.
“The staff are motivated… We want to see State Housing being compared to some of the giants in Africa. That is our goal. Five years from now… ten years from now, we’ll look back and say that we came, we met and we conquered,” he noted.
The Board Chairman of the company, Oheneba Owusu Afriyie IV, said despite the challenging nature of the year under review, the housing sector continued to grow as residential real estate became increasingly a popular investment asset class for a well-off Ghanaians.
He mentioned that although the sector remained very profitable, the housing deficit of the country continued to hover around 2million housing units.
Oheneba Afriyie said the SHC in the face of harsh economic conditions demonstrated sustained operational and financial growth enabling it achieve consistent superior metrics in the year 2023 relative to the previous years.
Furthermore, he highlighted that the total income for the company for the period under review was GH₵120, 621,416.00 which represented an increase of 47per cent compared to the previous year’s total income of GH₵82, 071,914.00.
The increase in the company’s revenue he attributed to a rise in various operating income chief among being leasehold income, ground rent and revenue from sales of houses which together constituted 80.8per cent of total income.
Moreover, he said these increases were driven by the company’s intensified efforts to enhance revenue generation as well as vigorous operational expansion, adding that, “The Company gained from investment income interest on bank accounts and foreign exchange transactions.”
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
