The construction of 100 affordable houses in Port Moresby will be the launchpad for similar projects elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, predicts Joe Webb, the Managing Director of Australian joint venture partner Amode.

Amode’s Joe Webb

Amode has formed a 50-50 joint venture with Papua New Guinea’s Anitua Group, a landowner company based in New Ireland Province, to form Amode RCS PNG Limited.

Together they are developing an affordable housing estate at 7-Mile, near Jacksons International Airport on the Hubert Murray Highway and close to shopping centres, schools and the CBD.

The dwellings are built to Australian standards, with steel frames, aluminium skirting boards and door jambs, as well as fibre cement floors and walls.

The structure has been designed for a 50-year life, which ‘few others’ could offer in Papua New Guinea, Amode’s Managing Director, Joe Webb, tells Business Advantage PNG.

The first stage of the project involves building 100 affordable houses, 40 of which have already been built, with varying designs and styles.

‘It’s housing for the local people, the rising middle-class, not the expatriate market,’ says Webb.

‘It will transition people out of state housing or settlements.

‘The structure has been designed for a 50-year life, which ‘few others’ could offer in Papua New Guinea.’

‘We are working through pricing and sizing for future stages at the moment. It’s potentially substantially larger but we’re not a point where we can discuss the next stages.’

RCS is also putting in a 4,400 square metre commercial precinct, which will house a supermarket, hardware store and a mezzanine level area with offices for doctors and other professionals.

‘There are several communal areas, like a pool and basketball courts and open parks and land.’

The first batch is priced between K400-500,000 as a house and land package. It’s a secure compound with perimeter fencing and sealed roads. All the infrastructure – power, water and sewage – is now in place.

Anitua ‘a natural fit’

Webb says Amode’s joint venture deal with Anitua ‘is a natural fit’.

‘We will have one or two expatriate specialists with 60-100 workers on site. We’re expecting that once we train the local people, they can take those skills to other locations across PNG.’

‘It has its own construction company and they have secured the rights to our system for the rest of PNG, including Bougainville, and Solomon Islands. The system itself is not only for housing but also education, commercial and industrial precincts as well.

A model Amode RCS PNG house

‘Some of the building materials will come from offshore and some from onshore. The building doesn’t come as a module, but it’s a system that will be installed on site. It gives us the ability to train local people.

‘We will have one or two expatriate specialists with 60-100 workers on site. We’re expecting that once we train the local people, they can take those skills to other locations across PNG.’

Launchpad

‘The 7-Mile project is a launchpad for bigger plans,’ says Webb.

‘There’s been a lot of investment over the last 10 years for expatriates and executive housing and during that time a rising middle-class has developed,’ says Webb, ‘and there is a much larger market that sits below the K400-K500,000 level.

‘We want to be able to provide affordable housing from the village level to the cities like Port Moresby and Lae.

‘Given PNG’s position in the region, it’s critical to get the infrastructure – roads, housing – put in place now. We want to play our part in the education and housing now and we’re excited about the potential.’

Funding

The 7-Mile housing project is part of an ambitious O’Neill government plan to build 40,000 affordable houses in Port Moresby in the next 10 years to relieve a chronic housing shortage. The government has allocated K200million to the project, funded by China’s Exim Bank.

Mortgages are provided under a 2014 agreement between the National Government and the Bank of South Pacific, which will be able to provide housing loans to approved first home borrowers, over a 40-year term and at an interest rate of four per cent per annum.

So far, 25 loans worth K8.4 million have been approved, according to local media reports.