OPEC Fund acknowledges difficulty of attracting partners to expand housing programs

The OPEC Fund has accumulated significant experience in implementing innovative housing initiatives, but the issue of scaling them up continues to remain one of the key challenges, head of the OPEC Fund's Innovative Financing Division, Walid Mehalaine, said during the panel discussion "From Global Housing Finance to Local Action on Affordable Housing: Leveraging Global Development Finance and Subnational Finance" within the framework of the 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF13) in Baku, Report informs.

As an example, the division head cited the "Nubian Vault" initiative in the Sahel region - a program for constructing sustainable housing using local building materials.

"The project demonstrated positive results, but after the completion of its implementation period, other partners did not express readiness to join and help bring the initiative to a larger scale. Scaling up such projects continues to be a serious challenge," noted W. Mehalaine.