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The Central Africa Building Society (CABS) says uptake of the Budiriro housing project has remained low with only 20 percent of the houses sold to date.

In an interview, CABS managing director, Mr Simon Hammond however said uptake is slowly improving after the firm relaxed most of the conditions of sale for the project and opened it up to the Diaspora market.

“To date we have sold over 500 houses from the 2 800 that have been constructed which comes to about 20 percent of the total project.

“The uptake of the project although still low is slowly improving after we opened it up to multiple home owners and those not on the waiting list.

“CABS continues to implement strategies aimed at improving the uptake of the houses,” he said.

Mr Hammond said CABS is finalising preparations to re-launch the $10 million Kurera/Ukondla Youth Fund in the coming months with a lot more emphasis on cautious lending.

He said CABS is currently looking at various models that could be used in dispersing the remaining $5 million.

According to statistics, 22 000 applications were received, with only 3 608 applications being approved.

Total amount approved was at $5,18 million, with $4,89 million having being disbursed. The average loan size was at $1 438.

The statistics also show that 34 percent of the approved applications went to women, 65 percent went to men while 1 percent went to hermaphrodites.

The agricultural sector received the highest number of approvals with 53 percent ($2,93 million), followed by Distribution 22 percent ($984 650) and Manufacturing 16 percent ($764 750).

Manicaland received the highest number of approvals at 15 percent amounting to $827 933, tied with Mashonaland East which received $807 350, followed by Mashonaland Central 13 percent ($676 285) and Harare 12 percent ($739 000). — Wires.