Suriname’s long-planned National Housing Construction Fund has officially moved into its active implementation phase, with a new leadership team formally installed on Friday to advance the government’s goal of easing the country’s persistent housing shortage.
During the inauguration ceremony held Friday, fund president Jennifer Simons swore in Anushka Ramdjielal as the new chief executive director, with Madhavi Bholasing taking up the post of deputy director. Completing the new governing structure is Siegmund Proeve, who was recently installed as chair of the fund’s supervisory board.
For Ramdjielal, stepping into the director role is both a significant honor and a pressing challenge. In comments shared via the Communication Service of Suriname, the new chief executive framed universal access to stable housing as a non-negotiable basic need, outlining that her core priority is to turn the fund into a tangible solution for Suriname’s widespread housing crisis. She emphasized that steady, incremental progress will guide the fund’s work in its early stages, noting: “We have to start somewhere to build from. Even if we only deliver 10 homes in our first round, that does not matter – what matters is that we get moving.”
Deputy director Bholasing echoed Ramdjielal’s commitment, adding that transparent, rule-based allocation will be central to the fund’s operations. She confirmed that all housing financing applications will be assessed strictly against pre-established eligibility and income criteria, ensuring the fund’s limited resources reach exactly the low- and middle-income groups the program was designed to support.
Proeve, chair of the supervisory board, clarified that the National Housing Construction Fund is not a newly launched initiative – its enabling legislation was first passed back in 2019, created to streamline access to affordable housing loans for citizens through partnerships with local commercial banks. Right now, the fund holds total capital of between 300 million and 350 million Surinamese dollars, and offers loans with interest rates between 3% and 5%, a far more affordable rate than many conventional lending products for low- and middle-income borrowers looking to buy or build a home.
The fund carries three core strategic goals, Proeve explained. Beyond its primary mission of cutting housing insecurity, the initiative is designed to stimulate Suriname’s stagnant construction sector by boosting new residential development, and it also aims to deepen the country’s domestic capital market by allowing pension funds and other private investors to participate in the program on a tax-free basis.
In a positive update for prospective homebuyers, Proeve confirmed that the first batch of housing financing approvals and disbursements are on track to be issued within 14 days. With the capital currently on hand, the fund is projected to deliver between 300 and 400 completed homes by the end of December this year, marking a meaningful first step toward addressing the country’s housing gap.