Pan African housing development financier, Shelter Afrique says Kenya played a key role in returning the institution back to profitability.
The Company turned around a Sh500 million loss recorded in June 2018 into a Sh7.8 million net profit as at June 2019, against a budgeted loss of Sh72 million.
As fees and other incomes grew by 11 per cent to Sh80 million uring the review period, interest income recorded a 19 per cent drop to Sh779 million due to a declining loan portfolio.
Shelter Afrique Chairman Nghidinua Daniel said the Company owes its speedy recovery to goodwill by member states and more so to Kenya’s support as a host nation.
“Kenya is one of the countries we’ve financed single largest projects which conform to our affordable housing strategy, and we’ve found ourselves working in tandem in many fronts involving the development of affordable housing,” he said.
He added that the Kenyan government was always ready to provide support when called upon. The state gave $16.2 million (Sh1.68 billion) to Shelter Afrique in additional capital between 2017-2019.
Shelter Afrique managing director Andrew Chimphondah said that in addition to the support by member states, recovery had been fast-tracked by a new agreement the company entered into with its lenders.
“We successfully negotiated and concluded debt restructuring agreement with all our eight lenders and effectively restructured the US110 million debt to be repaid over five years from the existing loan book, with a bullet payment in the fifth year,” he said.
Over the past three years, the financier had halted undertaking new projects to allow for restructuring of its operations and turnaround the company from loss-making.
Kenya is one of the top shareholders and the host nation to the pan-African housing financier, which is also owned by 44 African countries, the African Development Bank, and the African Re.
As at 2017, Kenya was the largest shareholder among governments with an 11.16 per cent stake, second to AfDB’s majority share of 22.7 per cent.
Other large shareholders included Ghana (11.02 per cent), Nigeria (9.62 per cent) and Algeria (7.36 per cent).
