El Salvador: Housing Loans Down 70%

©image: Ray Tibbitts

Mario Rivera is the President of Casalco, the Salvadoran Construction Chamber. He argues the government's anti-crisis plan does help his sector, but it is not enough.

"Builders believe the solution lies in approving the law for Preferential Interests, with which anyone getting paid minimum wage could get a loan to buy a house", reports Elsalvador.com.

Source: elsalvador.com

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Salvadoran Banking Loan Less for Construction

January 2012

Financial institutions lent 15% less for building houses in 2011, complained the Chamber of Construction.

The Salvadoran Chamber of Construction Industry (Casalco) reported that the portfolio of loans for housing construction experienced a decrease of 15% in 2011, as banks only granted $113.9 million.

Salvadoran Developers Look Abroad for Loans

July 2010

Faced with restrictions on local credit availability, 10 projects are looking to foreign banks for finance.

Mario Rivera, president of the Salvadoran Construction Chamber (Casalco), commented that it is not yet possible to access credits from the guarantee fund set up through a trust by the Multisectorial Bank of Investments (BMI).

Housing Loans Yet to Recover in El Salvador

September 2010

Credits for home purchase only rose one percentage point between May and July this year (from 3% to 4%).

This announcement was made by the Salvadoran Construction Chamber (Casalco). Its report adds that construction loans are still static at 4% of all credit granted by the banking sector.

El Salvador: Construction After Banking Flexibility

April 2009

In the absence financing solutions, the construction union sector initiated meetings with private banks.

The Salvadoran Construction Industry Chamber (CASALCO) is not seeking massive loans, but more flexibility in granting credit.

La Prensa Grafica published on its website: According to Nolasco, the hope is to find new funding mechanisms in private banking, as well as to know what the requirements are to gain access to resources. Earlier this year, several construction companies went to the the Multisectoral Investment Bank (BMI) to look for financing mechanisms that would allow the development of 11 housing projects that needed an investment of $70.1 million, of which $31 million was expected to be obtained from the second-tier bank."