Housing in Southern Africa April 2016

Gauteng Partnership Fund’s executive team is filled with passionate people, all of whom have the credentials, drive and ambition to deliver housing opportunities on behalf of the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements. GPF – Partner of Choice

E stablished to finance affordable housing and leverage funding from the private sector, the GPF provides concessionary funding and partners with finance institutions, stakeholders and property develop- ers to roll out housing opportunities across the residential spectrum. The provincial entity is headed up by CEO Boni Muvevi, who says there is no doubt that there is growing demand for rental and affordable housing and in certain areas demand outstrips supply. The returns in this segment of the market are much higher than the commercial market. His down-to-earth, practical ap- proach starts with good governance, guidelines and sustainability. The GPF embodies a culture of uplift- ment and providing opportunities for growth within the company while fulfilling itsmandate. A focus on skills development has led to negligible staff turnover. Muvevi believes in making people care about the work and this has certainly paid off. Over the years, the GPF has re- ceived many accolades for flagship projects that continue to shine and serve the rental market. Many of the inner city residential developers who partnered with GPF in the early years are now well established market players. In the past three or four years, the GPF has focused on developing new BEE property entrepreneurs, a programme that has steadily grown and reaped rewards. The establish- ment of the Entrepreneur Empower- ment Property Fund (EEPF) aimed

at entry level black owned property companies started with 11 housing projects now there are 94, with more in the pipeline. Muvevi says the GPF has been on a big capital raising drive in the capital markets; this includes senior debt and concessionary funding. GPF is also in the process of setting up an eq- uity fund. “We are quite aggressive as wewere set up to provide solutions to funding challenges for Gauteng, and took a decision to look for strategic partners in the housing sector.” “We are able to manage funding from any investor, donor, conces- sionary debt and we can redirect it to appropriate projects. This is the key competence we are able to bring to the fore to ensure that a project goes through a proper investment process, informed by our governance structure, due diligence, investment committee and board of trustees, as well as government structures that allow us to maintain proper control in terms of finance disciplines,” says Muvevi. GPF takes great pride in having continuously achieved clean audits in the past ten years. Says Muvevi, “This is key for organisations in the financial industry and in managing

Boni Muvevi

other institution’smoney. We demon- strate this ability in terms of quality projects and appropriate returns for our investors. With bad debt at 0,2% in this challenging environment, the repayment risks aremuch lower than what people perceive.” Ensuring that investors and de- velopment finance institutions can

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